The last act of service for Sir David Amess MP followed a ritual he had performed for 38 years.
This time it was in Belfairs Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, where he invited people to come to tell him their problems.
Amess took his constituency surgery duties more seriously than some MPs. On this day, the offer of help was there for someone who claimed they had just moved to his constituency of Southend West, and already needed his advice.
However, this was an attempt to seek not help, but jihadist martyrdom, fashioned with deceit and meant to end in bloodshed.
Ali Harbi Ali, then 25, had hatched a premeditated plot to hunt down, ensnare and murder an MP.
For the previous two years Ali had been crisscrossing London, carrying out reconnaissance – sometimes standing outside parliament for up to three hours – looking for an MP to assassinate.
Ali saw himself as a soldier of Islamic State and wanted to punish a British lawmaker for the UK’s actions in Syria. The terrorist group had declared a state there, which became a magnet for violent extremists around the world.
On Friday 15 October 2021, Ali bought a train ticket at 4.58am and set off from his home in Kentish Town, London. First he took a train across the capital, and then to Leigh-on-Sea’s small train station at 10.23am. He had booked his appointment for midday by email, providing a false address to deceive Amess’s staff.
Ali’s plans to murder a politician had been frustrated so far and he finally chose Amess, who advertised his advice surgery with dates and times and places on the internet.
He was also in the vanguard of MPs who resumed full face-to-face advice surgeries after the pandemic. Because Amess wanted to make it easier for his constituents to see him, he held this surgery in a church and not his constituency office, where there were some security measures.
Amess’s virtue made him vulnerable.
When Ali arrived at the church just before midday, nothing about him raised suspicions. The church was often busy: as well as hosting religious services, it was home to slimming classes, Irish dancing classes and “Robot Reg” to teach youngsters to read, as well as other youth activities.
Ali booked in, asked to use the toilet, then returned to the waiting area.
An aide to the MP chatted with Ali and was taken in by the cover story that he had just moved to the area. To the aide, Ali appeared relaxed and “chatty”, and said he liked the Southend area.
Just after midday the aide walked Ali to meet Amess, who was in a side room. Once there, Ali talked to the MP about why he had moved to the area, and said he wanted to discuss politics and foreign affairs. Amess reminded Ali that the point of the surgery was to talk about specific problems.
Ali was using his mobile phone during the conversation and Amess became suspicious. The MP asked if he was making a recording. Ali offered reassurance, held the phone up to Amess to show its screen, and placed it on the table.
After several minutes the meeting was interrupted when Ali’s phone rang. He stood up from his chair, put his hand in his pocket and said “sorry”. He then rapidly pulled a knife from his pocket, leant over the table and stabbed the 69-year-old repeatedly in the stomach. Amess screamed at times as the blows continued, raising his hands to defend himself.
Two constituents, one male and one female, arrived at the church entrance for their appointment, entering a scene of mayhem and terror. One saw Ali clutching a knife, and the assailant said: “I’ve killed him”. She did not run, despite the obvious danger.
She asked Ali to put down the knife and asked if she could go to help the mortally wounded MP. Ali refused and told her to get back.
A man who entered the church at that time saw Ali standing under the strip lights in the church hall, holding a knife in his right hand, saying: “I want to kill David, I want them all to die.”
Ali was still on the phone and the witness could hear a female voice saying “what have you done”, to which Ali replied he had done it because of Syria and that he wanted to be shot and killed.
The man asked Ali why he had done it and he replied: “I wanted to kill David and every MP who voted for bombings in Syria, I wanted to die, be shot and be a hero.”
The man asked Ali to let him check on Amess, but Ali raised the knife to scare him away as the MP bled.
Amess lay dying, slumped in the church, stabbed 21 times in total. All the blows had been directed only at him, with Ali making no attempt to harm anyone else, despite ample time and opportunity.
While waiting for the police, Ali sent a message he had written three weeks earlier on his Samsung mobile phone to all of his WhatsApp contacts. It gave what he saw as his justification for the killing of the backbench MP.
Officers from Essex police arrived within minutes. At first they decided to wait for armed officers to arrive, faced with scenes of fear and terror. One woman told them: “He’s stabbed David. The man is still inside the church and he is brandishing a knife, waving it around. He will stab you if you go in, he will stab you.”
The two officers from Essex police walked into the church and saw Ali, a knife in his right hand and a phone in his left, which he seemed to still be talking on. The police were armed with extendable batons and PAVA spray.
The two officers shouted at Ali, ordering him to drop the knife. He could see their protective equipment in their hands and asked if it was a gun or a Taser, to which one officer replied: “It’s not a gun.”
Ali then rushed at the two officers, who backed away and shouted for him to drop the knife. Ali complied, placing the knife on the ground. The officers grabbed Ali by the arms and placed him under arrest.
Ali was taken into custody as paramedics battled to save Amess. An air ambulance was called to a nearby field but was not used, so grave were the MP’s wounds. He was pronounced dead at 1.13pm, barely an hour after the attack. An inquest later heard that Amess died from multiple stab wounds to the chest area.
With Ali in custody, Essex police started passing information to Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command, known as SO15.
Some suspects talk when arrested, others do not. Ali very quickly confessed, telling police that in 2014 he was such a devotee of IS that he considered travelling to Syria to join their nascent caliphate, but did not do so.
By 2017 he had chosen to carry out an attack in the UK. Lockdowns during the Covid pandemic disrupted his plans after March 2020, Ali said. As Britain opened up, and restrictions allowed people on to the streets, Ali stepped up his efforts.
He confessed all to police, including how he had settled on a plan some years ago to kill an MP. He mentioned two in particular, MPs whom he had stalked as he carried out reconnaissance ahead of a potential attack.
He had made repeated visits to the London address of the cabinet minister Michael Gove, and drawn up plans to kill him, including one while he was out jogging.
Ali told police that in September 2021 he attended the constituency surgery of a different MP in London, Mike Freer, to reconnoitre an attack, but decided it would be too difficult. He also went to the Houses of Parliament to carry out this reconnaissance, but backed out because he felt the armed police presence was too great.
That plot thwarted, Ali told police he made an appointment to speak to Amess during his regular constituency surgery with the intention of murdering him on 15 October.
Two notes found on Ali’s phone were written in May 2019 and contained Gove’s home address and details of an attack plan.
Detectives uncovered extensive evidence of Ali, always alone, conducting hostile reconnaissance. They tracked his phone using cell site analysis, triangulated with his bank card usage from the previous two years as he travelled across London on the tube, and found CCTV footage confirming he was watching MPs as his plans developed.
He was located outside Gove’s address on six occasions, beginning on 9 March 2021, through to July. On 20 July that year he conducted “hostile reconnaissance” outside parliament, and then again on 21 and 22 July for almost two hours. He did so again on 18 August and 20 and 22 September. It is not known whether he was armed with a knife.
MI5 started searching for traces of Ali on their databases but there were none, as he was unknown as a terrorist suspect to them. But checks by police on their systems showed he had appeared on their radar.
Seven years earlier, when Ali was studying, he concerned teachers enough that they contacted Prevent, the official counter-radicalisation scheme. There, Ali was assessed as being of enough concern that he should receive intensive help and support on the Channel scheme. That year, in 2014, he was considering joining IS in Syria.
People referred to Channel are among those of most concern and are supposedly offered intensive help to turn them away from the ideology of violent extremism. Ali had volunteered to take part in the Channel scheme.
He strung those working with him on Channel along. In fact, he was becoming radicalised at the same time he was convincing them he posed no terrorist danger.
Over seven years, mainly via the internet, he became convinced by IS propaganda that violence was mandated by his religion. He told the court he had enjoyed a problem-free childhood, and at one stage had wanted to be a doctor.
For Prevent he had been seen as a success story after several months of support. His details were not passed on to MI5 or counter-terrorism police, a sign he was thought not to pose a danger.
Seven years later, that assessment was proven wrong, as an ideology of hate consumed him, with disastrous and chilling consequences.
