The Liverpool terrorist who was looking to detonate an explosive belt at a hospital in Liverpool on Monday — but only killed himself in the parking lot in front of it — probably wanted revenge for repeated rejections of his asylum applications.
Emad al-Swealmeen, 32, came to the United Kingdom in 2014 and then adopted the Christian faith. Although al-Swealmeen worked in Britain for a long time, local authorities doubted that he was from Syria, as he claimed, and believed he came from Jordan.
“One of the issues being looked at is whether this unresolved grievance pushed him over the edge and prompted him to carry out the attack,” the British The Sun tabloid quoted its source as saying.
Earlier reports in the British media cited psychological problems as the most likely motive. The Daily Mail reported that al-Swealmeen ended up in the psychiatric ward seven years ago because he was threatening passers-by with a knife on a Liverpool street.
On Sunday, al-Swealmeen planned to attack in the Liverpool Cathedral, where a memorial event for War Veterans Day took place. However, due to traffic closures in the city, he eventually asked a taxi driver to drop him off in front of the hospital.
But al-Swealmeen’s choice of explosive was what sealed his fate. He used the so-called Mother of Satan, made of acetone peroxide, which is extremely unstable. The bomb thus exploded in a taxi and killed only the attacker.
The taxi driver, David Perry, became a hero of the incident. He noticed the explosives and locked the man in the car. Shortly after the explosion, he managed to run out of the car, thus saving his life, before the vehicle caught on fire. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised him for his actions.
