Manchester synagogue attack: 'We knew this day would come'

0:00Jason Farrell:How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow. Coming up on the Sky News Daily, a Manchester synagogue is attacked on the holiest Jewish day of the year. What do we know and where do we go from here? How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup?

0:44Jason Farrell:Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow. Hi everyone, welcome to The Daily. And look, of course, we are going to be focusing on the terror attack at a synagogue in Manchester. We will be playing audio from the time that the attacker was killed. so be aware there will be some distressing content ahead which you or your children might not wish to hear.

1:29Jason Farrell:So far we know that two people have been arrested, three people have lost their lives, including the assailant. And this is the moment the police confronted him, just minutes after that attack began on Thursday morning. Everybody else, get back! If you're not involved, move back! Get away! Somebody's still in touch with people! Everybody else! He has a ball! Go away! He's got a problem! Mate, he's got a bob on his f***ing jacket, mate. He's trying to go into school. Mate, he's stabbed him. No, he's got a bob. Get the f*** out of here. The Prime Minister was in Denmark at the time of the attack.

2:09Jason Farrell:He immediately returned to the UK and chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government's emergency committee. This is what he said following that. But to every Jewish person in this country, I also want to say this. I know how much fear you will be holding inside of you. I really do. And so on behalf of our country, I express my solidarity, but also my sadness, that you still have to live with these fears. Nobody should have to do that. Nobody. And so I promise you that I will do everything in my power to guarantee you the security that you deserve, starting with a more visible police presence, protecting your community.

3:03Jason Farrell:That statement was made after we had recorded Thursday's edition of The Daily. I sat down with our home editor, Jason Farrell, shortly after four o 'clock and asked him what we knew at that point. OK, so this happened at a synagogue in northern Manchester and an individual drove their vehicle at the gates of the synagogue, which has security on the gates. It would be at a time when people were arriving and he seems to have then got out of the vehicle and started attacking people with knives. We know two people have died in this attack and there are three other members of the public in a serious condition in hospital.

3:39What seems to have happened is that at 9.31, a member of the public called the police. They described this as a code name Plato, which basically means that it's a marauding attack. That means that an individual is just basically trying to kill as many people as possible with whatever means possible. It appears that he didn't get into the synagogue. That was barricaded. He started stabbing at the windows. The police arrived on the scene. and that footage that you played out, we hear the police officers shouting to the public, get away if you're not involved in this, get away from the scene, get away from the scene.

4:12And one of the officers says he has a bomb. And then we see a moment, which I don't think has been broadcast, where the officers shoot the man and he falls to the ground. Now, he's probably already been shot because he's got up from the ground, but the fact that he was getting up again meant that those officers had to make that decision. Did he pose a threat to the public? They decided he does. and they shoot him.

4:34Jason Farrell:As yet, we don't have confirmation about any sort of device. We have seen something that could resemble a bomb in the pictures. Yeah, what we've had is Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, saying that he was wearing what looked like a suicide vest. And so police officers in that moment, whether he was or not, made that decision that it was or could have been. There was enough reasonable suspicion that it was. So they made this decision to open fire, but we haven't yet had confirmation. What we know is that the bomb squad were brought in, and from that point on, they tried to make the area safe.

5:14And there was a loud explosion heard near the scene later, which we understand was them making a controlled explosion of the vehicle that he arrived in.

5:23Jason Farrell:What do we know then about motive? Presumably nothing at this stage, aside from the fact that this was an attack on a synagogue, a Jewish place of worship, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jewish people. I mean, people are going to immediately assume an anti-Semitic motivation for this attack. Every single thing about it says it's anti-Semitic. It's the date of it, the place, the location. The people, two people from the Jewish community are dead. It's done, as you say, a religious day that couldn't cause more hurt. It's a very deeply reflective time for people from the Jewish faith.

6:00And we've known that there have been other attacks on this date in other places, Germany in particular. And we know that there was actually three people arrested yesterday in Germany plotting allegedly an attack on a synagogue. So, you know, these things all point to the fact very, very strongly that it's an anti-Semitic attack. Beyond that, you know, obviously we have the wider political context. We have what's going on in Gaza. obviously there's no reason to reasonably believe that anyone who's worshipping in Manchester has anything to do with what's going on in Gaza but that will be the conversation now around the protests, around how the government have handled that you know the messages that have come out in the media, the messages that have been online and there was a deep concern amongst the Jewish community that this was a distinct likelihood That's what the Community Security Trust, who look after the Jewish community's security on a voluntary basis, that's what they've been saying.

7:07This is likely to happen. And it now has.

7:11Jason Farrell:I mean, you mentioned the CST there. They are often involved in providing security for synagogues up and down the country, in fact. Do we know if there was security at this particular synagogue? We do, actually, because Sky News spoke to Rafi Bloom, who was one of the congregation who was going, who was actually heading down there. And he'd been speaking to some of the... He was on his way. He was on his way there. And he'd been there the night before and he'd actually, he knew who, he didn't say names, but he knew who the security people were. They have two paid for security people. And they sometimes intersperse that with members of the voluntary community.

7:47and they would have things like stab vests and they would be prepared for this kind of thing. I mean, and not only that, I think it is notable that the attacker wasn't able to get into the synagogue. That's just the first ring of security. They also have security getting into the synagogue and it's no doubt that he was barricaded out and that will have saved lives. And one of the messages that the CST have sent out is don't congregate outside and make sure that the synagogues are locked wherever possible.

8:17Jason Farrell:What is the significance of declaring this a terrorist incident? Well, it means that it's motivated by hate. It's motivated to cause terror and fear within a community. It is not, it doesn't necessarily tell us, you know, the exact motivations of the person. It doesn't tell us what the mental health state of that person is. They may well have had mental health problems as many terrorists sadly do have. But it tells us that it is motivated to cause fear. And terrorists are people who want to change politics. They want to impact on the way that we live our lives. Does it have a practical effect on the investigation, though?

8:59In some respects, it does, because we therefore want to understand why this person has become politicized in this way, has become radicalized, as the expression we often use. So that's part of it. But then there's also if that person does have associates or does have other people that have been working with, who has he been radicalised by? Is that person trying to radicalise other people? And if he has other associates, you know, where else are they? Does it add to an additional threat to other synagogues around the country?

9:31Jason Farrell:At least at one point during the day, hospitals and I believe also schools were warning that they were in an inverted commas lockdown. Why would that be? Well, it was a decision made by the hospital. I spoke to the police about this. They didn't ask hospitals to do this. It's a protocol. It's done to protect their staff. They said no one could come in, no one could come out. And they were telling people, don't come to emergency services unless you have a life threatening issue. That's now been lifted quite recently. But it is their own protocol that they have put in place, as they said, to protect their patients and to protect their staff.

10:07Obviously, this wasn't a mass, mass casualty event.

10:09Jason Farrell:Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, the Manchester Arena attack, I can understand in those circumstances why they would say stay away unless it's really urgent because finite capacity. But it seemed to be a security protocol they had put in place, but it wasn't something that they were told to put in place because of a defined risk. Just in terms of the way that those armed police officers dealt with the suspect at the scene. Was there anything there that was not in terms of protocol absolutely by the book? I've seen speculation online that there was shoot to kill or things like that. But it's, you know, there was a man who was threatening people with what looked like an explosive device attached to him.

10:52Jason Farrell:And they dealt with it as they should, didn't they? Well, there's a couple of things to say. First of all, marauding attacks tend to be taken out very, very quickly. So if you think of London Bridge where eight people were killed, that lasted about eight minutes. The Westminster Bridge attack was over in 82 seconds. Five people killed. Obviously, it's Westminster. There were armed police officers. They acted very swiftly. This took seven minutes from the phone call to the police officers being on the scene and shooting this man. Now, those first shots would be highly understandable. We don't know.

11:27We haven't seen what happened, what led to him being on the ground. What we do see is the man was on the ground and then he gets up and the police officers shoot him. And you could say they were a reasonable distance away from him that he couldn't have attacked them with a knife, for example. They have to decide in that split second whether they're within their reasonable understanding of the situation, whether there is a threat to the public or to themselves. And if there is, their instruction is to open fire. And that's what they're trained to do. Now, bear in mind that it was at least three or four hours before the bomb squad came in and various other people came in to decide whether he was wearing a bomb.

12:09It took that long for a team of people to work that out. That police officer has to make that decision in split seconds. And that's the decision he made. So almost you could say vindicated by the fact that nobody just turned up and said, oh, why did you shoot him? We were then just, you know, they brought in the bomb squad.

12:26Jason Farrell:Yeah. So you can see why that is understandable. And then when you look at the images of the man, he did seem to be wearing some kind of heavy vest. He did seem to have things hanging from his belt. Whether it was credible, whether he could have blown himself up, we'll find out. But that's the decision that police officer had to make in that moment. And who would put themselves in that individual's shoes right now? What if the Prime Minister, we know that he was supposed to be at meetings in Denmark today. He came straight back. And I understand as we are talking, in fact, he is now in that committee, the COBRA committee as it's known.

12:59Jason Farrell:Just remind us what that's for and what it might be able to do. Well it is really a committee meeting that's held in the cabinet office which includes cabinet ministers but also members of security services, emergency services. They will give him an assessment of what's happened, what they knew. He obviously clearly knew it was a terrorist attack or they believed it was a terrorist attack very quickly because he was straight back on that plane and they will say what obviously the most important thing now this suspect is been killed. Is there any other threat to the UK? And what can we do to reassure the public?

13:33And we have heard from Lawrence Taylor, who is the most senior anti-terrorism police officer, saying that they are increasing the security around the Jewish community, that they're mobilizing, he described it, and mobilizing quickly to make sure and to bring reassurance to that community as much as they possibly can.

13:56Jason Farrell:I mean, should we expect that, you know, police forces up and down the country will in essence be doing exactly that? We've heard from Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, that there will be additional assistance provided to synagogues in this part of the country. You've got to expect that it's going to happen everywhere. Yeah, you would. And you'll also expect that people and institutions will be jumpier. I mean, there was an evacuation of Eastern Station. I have no idea if it's anything to do with this, but obviously people were contacting us saying, oh there's something happening here people will jump in and they're being told be vigilant this is a time to be vigilant even if there wasn't some connected attack with this individual it's quite possible it can inspire other people to attack as we've seen following other terrorist attacks so it is a time of vigilance and it is a time when police will step up what they have in terms of their resources around the Jewish community and the Jewish community themselves with this voluntary organisation will bring in volunteers as well to protect as much as they can their places of worship and their schools.

14:58Jason Farrell:There has obviously been plenty of horror expressed amongst the Jewish community and beyond it but within the Jewish community I have to say not a hell of a lot of surprise that this has happened. No, we've had people expressing horror from all aspects from the king to the prime minister prince and princess of wales and also from the muslim community when you talk to the jewish community um there is this resignation and feeling that this was something that was on the horizon it was coming a lot of them do feel aggrieved by the protests and the fact that what people were allowed to say the comparison with jewish people to nazis for example which is extremely offensive and they feel that you know this has been allowed to happen the people i've been hearing on the airways today it has to be said again people in that synagogue you know have no more control over what happens in gaza than you or i uh and so whilst those concerns are raised we should make the point you know there is a separation between the jewish community here and what is going on in israel 100 absolutely but the interesting thing to me is that if you look at Manchester and its long history of accepting people from around the world, there has, for 150 years, been a sizable Jewish population in that city.

16:21Jason Farrell:And for almost as long, there has been a sizable Muslim population living in that city. Well, the Labour MP Graham Stringer, I'll just read what he had to say about it because he represents that area, you know, he called it appalling and depressing. And he said, you know, There are equal-sized communities there. He said you shouldn't distort the fact that the actuality of the vast majority of people in the Jewish community, the Muslim community and other communities, there is a level of tolerance and a determination to get on with each other. There is determination between the communities not to let those extremist evil people wind things up.

16:58That is the truth of the matter. There are a large Jewish population there. There is a large Muslim population together. and they have lived peacefully side by side for a long time.

17:09Jason Farrell:What happens now, Jason? Of course, there will be an investigation into the facts surrounding this incident. But I'm wondering more broadly, is there now going to be a very big, very vocal conversation about community cohesion, about anti-Semitism, about the way in which we as a country deal with different communities with different outlooks on life? To be honest, I think we have been having that conversation for a long time now, but this does sharpen it. It is tangible that this threat exists. We've known that threat exists, and it's just been a case of, I think, the Jewish community realising.

17:53I mean, that is why they have so many people with security around these synagogues and their schools, and that's why they do feel vulnerable. I think that's the thing from today, that the Jewish community feels vulnerable and they are worried about their insecurity and it just sharpens that conversation.

18:19Jason Farrell:Jason, thank you. Well, as mentioned, we began recording this edition of the podcast at roughly four o 'clock on Thursday afternoon. So for the very latest and more of Jason's analysis, head to skynews.com or the app. The Daily is back tomorrow. Till then, do take care. How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand.

19:01Jason Farrell:Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.