Abdullah Albadri walked from Kilburn in north-west London to the Israeli embassy in Kensington on 28 April 2025, his head and mouth covered by a red-and-white scarf and sunglasses over his eyes. He had two 10cm-long knives with red-and-white handles in his pockets.
At around 18:00, the 34-year-old Kuwaiti national saluted two nearby diplomatic protection officers and tried to climb the security fence. Armed officers from the Met's Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command stopped him from entering the embassy.
When officers caught him, Albadri said: 'I want to make a crime inside there. Why are you stopping me? Why are you stopping me from making crimes?'
Mrs Justice Lambert KC sentenced Albadri to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years at the Old Bailey on Monday, 5 October. A jury had found him guilty by majority verdict of preparing terrorist acts and possessing two bladed articles.
No one was injured in the attempted attack.
Albadri had arrived in the UK from France on a small boat on 12 April 2025, sixteen days before the embassy attempt. He had previously arrived by small boat in August 2021, applied for asylum and returned to France before a decision was made on that application.
After his return in April 2025, Albadri stayed in a hotel in Basingstoke for three days. He was then told that he was ineligible for accommodation because the earlier asylum application remained outstanding.
The court heard that he planned the attack after sleeping rough in the capital and was motivated by the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. During a later police interview, Albadri said he had wanted 'to do something to stop the war'.
Phone analysis showed that he had looked up the embassy's location in the days before the attempt. During the five days before his arrest, he also searched several Arabic terms connected with suicide and martyrdom.
Police found a handwritten copy of a verse titled 'the benefit of martyrdom' when they searched him after his arrest.
Commander Helen Flanagan, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said the Israeli embassy had 'face various security alerts in recent times'.
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