Explosion of a taxi in Liverpool: the main suspect identified

The terrorist threat was taken up a notch in the UK on Monday, November 15, from“Important” To “Serious” – meaning that an attack is highly probable -, after the explosion of a car which killed one the day before in the city of Liverpool, in the north-west of England, treated as a “Terrorist incident” by the local police and MI5, the country’s internal security services.

The announcement was made after an emergency so-called “Cobra” meeting chaired by Boris Johnson in Downing Street. The events in Liverpool constitute “A brutal reminder of the need to remain extremely vigilant”, underlined the British Prime Minister. “What yesterday’s events showed is that the British will not be intimidated by terrorism. We will never give in to those who seek to divide us with acts of indiscriminate violence, because our freedoms and our ways of life will always prevail ”, added the leader.

The circumstances and motivations for the attack were still unclear on Monday evening after an initial press conference by police in Merseyside (the Liverpool region), which announced the arrest of four men in about 20 years. The car – a taxi – exploded in front of the reception of the Liverpool Women’s Hospital just before 11 a.m. on Sunday morning, as a few hundred yards away, a Remembrance ceremony was taking place in Liverpool Cathedral. Sunday (a tribute to the veterans and missing of the British Army and the Commonwealth), as it has stood hundreds, simultaneously, across the country.

Read also (2020): Reading attack in UK reclassified as terrorist attack

“Miracle”

Taxi driver David Perry was able to exit the vehicle just after the detonation. Slightly injured, he was released from the hospital on Monday evening. “He is really lucky to have made it out, it’s a miracle”, his wife said. The passenger died in the explosion.

Police explained on Monday that they “Think you know” this man and that he probably has “Made the bomb” with which he was in the taxi. In the evening, she made public his identity – Emad Al Swealmeen, 32 – and confirmed that she had carried out extensive searches in two houses outside Liverpool where he recently stayed. the Daily Telegraph asserted that he was originally from the Middle East and unknown to the security services. the Sun added Monday evening that he would have been born in Jordan, would have seen his asylum application in the United Kingdom rejected in 2014 and would have converted to Christianity in 2017.

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