The Metropolitan Police have charged a 45-year-old Somali who was granted U.K. citizenship with attempting to murder two British Jews in the north London Jewish suburb of Golders Green, formally declaring the April 29, 2026, attack a “terrorist incident.” Essa Suleiman, who lives in Camberwell, south London, has been charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count of possession of a knife. He is also charged with attempted murder in relation to a separate incident earlier that day in Great Dover Street, Southwark.
Anti-semitism is a disease in the soul of British Islam today.
While reports are silent about Suleiman’s religious background or ideological commitments, law enforcement officials confirmed that Suleiman was referred to the Prevent counter-terrorism program in 2020, but the case was closed six weeks later. The largest focus of the Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) investigations is “Islamist extremist terrorism” inspired or enabled by groups such as Islamic State (Da-esh) or Al Qaida, according to the force’s website.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis named the victims as Nachman Moshe ben Chaya Sarah (34) and Moshe Ben Baila (76). The assailant “was trying to attack anyone visibly Jewish,” and was chasing Jews coming out of the synagogue, Ben Grossnass, of the Jewish Shomrim Northwest Community Patrol, said. Shomrim also immobilized Suleiman with a vehicle and detained him until police arrived.
Anti-Radicalization Program Under Scrutiny
“The fact that Suleiman was referred six years ago to Prevent, only for his case to be closed shortly after, suggests a massive failing on the part of the UK authorities,” Ben Cohen, Senior Analyst from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, remarked.
The police did not reveal if Suleiman had Islamist links or was a lone-wolf motivated by jihadi ideology. “One of the lines of enquiry is whether this attack was deliberately targeting the Jewish community in London,” a CTP statement said. Commander Helen Flanagan, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, which is leading the investigation, urged against avoiding “any further speculation in relation to this case so that justice can run its course.”
However, investigators from Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a U.K. charity dedicated to countering antisemitism, found that Suleiman had previously served multiple, significant prison sentences for armed assaults, including stabbing two police officers and their dog in 2008.
In a series of posts on X, CAA noted that the police had released “very little detail” about the identity of the assailant, who was born in Somalia and came to Britain as a child in the 1990s. CAA added: “We will not release his identity until the police name him, but when they do, we will be providing any important details that we feel have been omitted.”
“CAA has received reports that he has previously gone to vigils held for the hostages formerly held by Hamas in Gaza, where he was verbally and physically abusive towards Jews, resulting in him being reported to the police,” CAA tweeted after police identified the suspect as Suleiman.
“The safety of Jewish people in the U.K., and the population generally, is a matter of the greatest public importance—lives are at stake. This is a national emergency, and that requires the Prime Minister to set out what action he is going to take urgently to tackle the radicalization of British citizens, Islamist extremism, foreign interference by Iran and others, and the appeasement within our authorities,” a spokesperson for CAA told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).
Fiyaz Mughal, OBE, founder of Muslims Against Antisemitism, told FWI: “Prevent is a funneling system for people who are referred for comments or behaviors that may be seen as being extremist in nature. Prevent funnels people into Channel, which is a multi-agency support service and there is a threshold by which that support is provided. For this individual to fall through this net is serious and means that initial assessments or actions in Prevent were wrong or misjudged or that previous information on this perpetrator was not fully assessed. There needs be a serious review of what happened.”
Suleiman’s History of Violence and Imprisonment
In December 2008, the Swindon Crown Court sentenced Suleiman to nine years in prison after he stabbed dog handler Police Constable Neil Sampson and his German Shepherd, Anya, in Liden. A second officer was also injured.
The judge told Suleiman he would serve a minimum of four and a half years and would be released only when he was no longer considered a public threat.
The court heard that Suleiman had a string of previous convictions for violent crimes, including armed assaults on police officers. Despite his record, Suleiman was hired as a security guard patrolling football pitches at Abbey Meads Community School, the Swindon Advertiser found.
The Somali-born Muslim was addicted to chewing khat leaves, a legal herbal drug that can create a psychotic effect in people with existing mental health problems. Metropolitan Police commissioner Mark Rowley confirmed that Suleiman had a history of “serious violence and mental health issues.”
Jihadi Outfit Claims Responsibility for Attack
Counter-terrorism police are probing a claim of responsibility for the stabbings by an Iran-linked outfit known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI). Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism published a special report in March identifying HAYI as the terror group behind recent attacks on Jews in Europe, FWI reported.
Soon after the attack, The Guardian reported that HAYI, which translates as The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right Hand, claimed responsibility for explosions and arson attacks targeting Jewish institutions in Belgium, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Greece between March 9 and 14, and the March 23 arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in the Jewish area of Golders Green in London, the report said.
The Islamist newspaper 5Pillars expressed outrage that less attention has been paid to the apparent Muslim identity of Suleiman’s first victim. In an article published on May 2, 2026, the outlet complained of coverage “focusing solely on the Jewish victims, as well as appearing to downplay the importance of his mental health issues instead fixate public attention on his ethnicity and Islam.” The article made no reference to HAYI’s claim of responsibility.
Muslim Council of Britain Responds
The Muslim Council of Britain, which issued a statement on the day of the stabbings, took a similar approach in a statement issued on May 2, affirming its “solidarity with the Jewish community amid a rise in antisemitism and condemned the attack in Golders Green.”
The MCB noted that the attacker—recently discharged from a psychiatric unit — had also targeted a Muslim man, Ishmail Hussein, earlier that same morning, but said this aspect of the incident received far less public attention. The group described the disparity as raising “serious questions.”
The MCB rejected attempts to hold British Muslims or Palestinian rights advocates collectively responsible for the surge in antisemitism, calling such framing “inaccurate and counterproductive” and a form of “reckless scapegoating.”
The organization concluded that ensuring safety for people of all faiths on Britain’s streets requires greater unity rather than division, and that those engaging in collective blame “are part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Islamist Response
FWI contacted the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Center of England, and the British Muslim Heritage Center, asking if they had issued a statement condemning the antisemitic attack. FWI also asked what Muslim organizations were doing to combat the rise of Islamist antisemitism. The Islamic Center of England did not respond, but Muslim Council of Britain alerted FWI to two statements issued on its website.
Rise of Islamist Antisemitism in Britain Under Scrutiny
The day after the attack, Green deputy leader Rachel Millward attempted to blame rising food prices for a notable increase in antisemitism in the U.K. during a segment of BBC Question Time that has since gone viral on X. Millward’s response elicited a wave of rebukes from numerous outlets. Hugh Timms, a staff writer for Spiked Online remarked that Milward “looked as if she had just been addressed in Swahili” when confronted with the question. Milward’s refusal to address the issue of antisemitic hostility in U.K.’s Muslim community was countered by Mughal who,in a May 2 op-ed for The Telegraph on May 2, declared: “Labour won’t say it, so I will: Islam has an anti-Semitism problem. ... Anti-semitism is a disease in the soul of British Islam today.”
Numerous reports have addressed the problem in recent years.
“The hatred of Jews is a core tenet of Islamism,” a report titled Antisemitism in the UK in 2024 by the Henry Jackson Society concluded. “It is not surprising, therefore, that Islamist extremists are antisemites.”
The Counter Extremism Group’s August 2025 report titled Islamist Antisemitism: A Neglected Hate, established the pivotal role that Islamist ideology plays in fostering and spreading antisemitism among Muslims in Britain.
The 94-page document published in July 2025, “Islamist Antisemitism: A Neglected Hate, excoriates policymakers for failing to identify “Islamist antisemitism” as a “distinct phenomenon” and for attempting to rationalize Islamist Jew-hatred as a response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
