A supermarket worker with close links to the Manchester Arena bomber has been found guilty of fighting with Islamic State in Syria.

Mohammed Abdallah, 26, travelled to the war-torn state with the help of his younger brother, who ran an Isis “communications hub” from their family home in south Manchester.

The Old Bailey heard how Abdallah was listed as a specialist sniper in official Islamic State records and managed to slip into Syria with two fellow Manchester jihadists in 2014.

Their route into the country was coordinated by Abdallah’s 24-year-old brother, Abdalraouf Abdallah, a convicted terrorist who was close friends with the Arena bomber, Salman Abedi.

Abdalraouf Abdallah, who was jailed last year for helping the group enter Syria, was visited in Altcourse prison in Liverpool by Abedi at least twice earlier this year. One of the visits happened just weeks before Abedi killed 22 people and injured more than 250 others at an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May.

Thursday’s conviction of Abdallah, a dual Libyan-British national who moved with his family to Manchester as a child, will again shine an uncomfortable spotlight on the small warren of streets around the city’s Moss Side that have been home to at least 17 convicted, dead or missing terrorists since 2014.

The trial heard how Abdallah travelled to Syria with another extremist from Manchester, Nezar Khalifa, 28, to meet two others from the city: the former RAF serviceman Stephen Gray, 34, and Raymond Matimba, 28.

Matimba, who was reportedly a friend of Abedi’s, appeared in footage released earlier this year alongside Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John”, and other prominent British jihadists in a cafe in Raqqa in 2014.

Emwazi, who beheaded a number of hostages, was killed in a drone strike in November 2015. Gray was jailed last year after unsuccessfully attempting to join the jihadists in Syria. The whereabouts of Khalifa and Matimba is unclear.

Counter-terrorism officers would not confirm whether Abedi, 22, was friends with Abdallah and his brother. All were children of Libyan dissidents who lived barely a mile from each other in Manchester’s southern suburbs.

Abdallah’s family arrived in 1993, shortly after Abdalraouf was born and when Mohammed was three. Abedi’s family were granted asylum in Manchester the following year, and their son was born on New Year’s Eve.

A troubled student, Abedi moved between several schools but eventually settled at Burnage academy, where both the Abdallah brothers are believed to have studied.

When the uprising against the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi began in 2011, the young trio joined dozens of other Libyan Mancunians taking up arms in their homeland. Abdallah, then 20, told jurors he had joined the Tripoli Brigade while his brother, then 17, is said to have joined the 17 February Martyr’s Brigade.

On the Libyan battlefield, Abdalraouf Abdallah was left paralysed after being shot in the back by a sniper. Abedi’s father, Ramadan Abedi, urged his friends on Facebook to pray for the teenager’s recovery.



Abdalraouf Abdallah returned later in 2011, seeking NHS treatment for his life-changing injuries, while Abedi is said to have come back after Gaddafi was defeated. He and Abdallah struggled to reintegrate into society on their return, both becoming involved in low-level criminality.

Abdallah, who smoked and sold cannabis, stole to pay his rent after being thrown out of his home for returning drunk from a New Year’s Eve party. Abedi, meanwhile, was given police reprimands in 2012 for theft and receiving stolen goods, and later when he punched a female student in college after making a snide remark about her clothing.

Detectives are still investigating Abedi’s links to criminal gangs and known terrorists in the streets around his Fallowfield home, but it is thought that his connection with Abdalraouf Abdallah would have brought him within the Isis-supporting network of Raphael Hostey, a recruiter, Matimba and Gray.

Counter-terrorism officers believe Abdalraouf Abdallah, Gray and Matimba and other local extremists attended the Jame’ah Masjid E Noor mosque in Old Trafford, a 10-minute walk from the semi-detached house where Abdalraouf “pulled the strings” of his jihadist network.

A spokesman for the mosque said he was “disturbed” at the group’s terror convictions and insisted they were not radicalised or recruiting at the centre. He added: “We had no reasons for suspecting anyone because there was nothing to be suspicious of. They are quiet, calm and they come and pray and then they go. They are here for a few minutes – they come alone and they leave alone.”

Jurors in Mohammed Abdallah’s trial were told how the group’s journey to Syria was orchestrated by Abdalraouf Abdallah from the family home in Moss Side.

Sending thousands of messages over Skype, WhatsApp and the encrypted messaging service Viber, Abdalraouf organised their passage through Europe and arranged for them to collect weapons and money using a network of jihadist contacts in Brussels, Jordan, Libya and Syria.

Abdalraouf was “wholly committed to terrorist purposes” in sending British fighters to Syria, the Old Bailey was told.

In official Isis records leaked to a Sky News reporter last year and used in evidence in this trial, Mohammed Abdallah described himself as a sniper and specialist in the Dushka, a Russian machine gun. He gave his former occupation as “supermarket vendor” and his religious level as “beginner”.



Mohammed Abdallah was arrested by counter-terrorism police when he returned to the UK on 16 September 2016, two years and two months after crossing the border into Syria.

Detectives said there was no specific evidence to suggest he was planning an attack in the UK, but jurors in his trial were told it was “wholly exceptional” for him to be permitted to leave Isis.

Giving evidence in his trial, Abdallah claimed he was not particularly religious and that he drank alcohol, smoked cannabis and took ecstasy as a young man after failing all his GCSEs at school. He attended Burnage academy, but would have left before Abedi started there in 2009.

DCS Dominic Scally, head of the north-west counter-terrorism unit, said he did not believe south Manchester was “of particular significance” to the recruitment of Isis fighters. He said: “I think it’s a large population area, with lots of different communities, and here we’ve got a group of individuals who have chosen a particular path for their own reasons and I don’t infer anything out from that.

“From the UK, 850 people have travelled to Syria, from the many millions that live in the UK. These people are a tiny, tiny, tiny minority and are not representative of the UK or any particular community.”

Relatives at the Abdallah family home in Moss Side refused to comment last week, telling reporters to “go away”.