Manchester Synagogue Attack Inquiry: Mahmood Orders Full Public Probe Into Heaton Park Deaths

One year on, Britain still doesn't have the full story of the Heaton Park synagogue attack. Now it might finally get one. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced a public inquiry into the deaths of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby — the two Jewish worshippers killed in the Yom Kippur terror attack last October — and this one will go places a coroner's court simply couldn't.

That's a promise with teeth, because the facts we already know are uncomfortable reading. Police had seized the attacker's mobile phone in an earlier arrest — and never looked at it. Extremist material sat unread on a device in a police property store while Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, rammed his car into pedestrians outside the synagogue and stabbed his way toward its doors. Two men died. Three more were seriously hurt. A year later, the questions that matter — what did the state know, and when — still don't have answers.

What Mahmood announced on Monday

Mahmood told MPs the inquiry would examine the deaths of Mr Cravitz, 66, who died of stab wounds, and Mr Daulby, 53 — struck by a police bullet as he helped hold the synagogue doors shut against the attacker. Requested by the coroner, the inquiry converts the inquests into a wider probe with far greater powers.

The key line, quoted by Reuters: the inquiry "will ensure that all evidence can be heard, including any sensitive national security material that could not otherwise be fully heard." In plain English, MI5-supplied material that Home Office lawyers moved to withhold from the inquests can now be examined, in part behind closed doors. An inquest is narrow. An inquiry can follow the intelligence thread wherever it leads.

The unexamined phone

Greater Manchester Police had Al-Shamie's phones before the attack. They didn't examine the contents until after the synagogue doors were bloodied. An internal review later found extremist material on the devices, and a senior officer said he was "deeply sorry" over missed opportunities to uncover the plot.

Sorry doesn't change police procedure; inquiries sometimes do. One concrete outcome could be reform of how police triage seized devices and share intelligence with national security services — the exact seam where this case fell apart. When a terror suspect's phone sits unopened for months, that isn't a one-off mistake. It's a system failure, and naming it on the record is how it gets fixed.

Just one of a series

Mahmood didn't frame Heaton Park as an isolated horror. She listed them: the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green (trial set for March 2027); a failed attack on the Israeli Embassy, whose attacker was jailed for 20 years last week; a spate of arson attacks on Jewish targets across north London; and a plot foiled last month, hours before Yom Kippur, targeting Manchester's Jewish community — two Iranian nationals have been charged with terrorism offences.

Think about that for a moment. A year after the worst antisemitic atrocity in living British memory, someone was allegedly planning a follow-up against the same community, at the same festival, on nearly the same date. Mahmood also announced an extra £250 million for policing in Jewish areas and tackling antisemitism on the streets, according to the European Jewish Congress.

Sky News speaks to a Heaton Park synagogue attack survivor a year on: "The UK is going down a very dark path."

What an inquiry can — and can't — do

Inquiries force institutions to sit in public and answer, under oath, for what they knew. The officers who decided a terror suspect's phone could wait its turn in the backlog will have to explain that on the record. And the harder question: Al-Shamie was a British citizen who said he was acting for Islamic State before officers shot him dead. Is Britain's counter-terror apparatus built for the threat as it looks in 2026 — or for the one it was designed against twenty years ago?

British Jews have said for years they don't feel safe. An inquiry won't make anyone safe by itself. But after a year of anniversaries, apologies, and a foiled repeat plot, "fully understood" — Mahmood's words — is the least the two men who died holding a synagogue door deserve.

Sky News: the Prime Minister addresses the nation after the Heaton Park synagogue terror attack.

Sources

• Reuters — UK launches public inquiry into killing of two Jewish men in synagogue attack
• The Times of Israel — UK launches public inquiry into deaths during 2025 Yom Kippur Manchester synagogue attack
• European Jewish Congress — UK Home Secretary confirms public inquiry into deadly Heaton Park Synagogue attack
• Haaretz — U.K. launches public inquiry into killing of two Jewish men in synagogue attack

Photo: Number 10 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Prime Minister at the scene of the attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue, Crumpsall, Manchester, 3 October 2025. File photo, not taken at the inquiry announcement.