Mohammed Alfatih, a 40-year-old IT consultant and father of four living in Kings Heath, Birmingham, has been found guilty of wounding a bailiff and related weapons offences.
The conviction lifts reporting restrictions that had prevented him from being named, revealing his prior role as a bodyguard to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and German allegations that he helped plan attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe.
Alfatih, also known as Mohammed Naim, is the son of senior Hamas official Basem Naim. Photographs and open-source material show him accompanying Haniyeh in the mid-2000s. He entered the UK illegally in 2014 in the back of a lorry, claimed asylum citing persecution in Egypt, and was granted it in 2015.
He later received British citizenship around 2020–2021 and changed his name. He lived in suburban Birmingham with his wife and children while working as an IT consultant.
German authorities accuse him of acting as a high-ranking Hamas foreign operative in a plot intended for around the second anniversary of the 7 October 2023 attacks.
Prosecutors allege he collected firearms in Berlin, transported them to a storage unit in Vienna along with disguise materials, and recorded a video in which a masked figure claimed responsibility on behalf of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades. The alleged targets included Jewish community sites, Israeli diplomats, and pro-Israel events in Germany and Austria.
The plot was disrupted after a tip from Israel’s Mossad; seven other suspects have been detained in Germany. Alfatih was arrested in the UK on the German extradition warrant while already in custody.
At Birmingham Crown Court, a jury convicted him by majority verdict of unlawful wounding, two counts of possessing a bladed article, and criminal damage. He was acquitted of the more serious charge of wounding with intent. The case arose from an October 2025 incident in which enforcement officer Kevin Bucknall visited the family home over more than £2,000 in unpaid parking fines on Alfatih’s wife’s car.
Footage showed Alfatih smashing a van window and lunging with kitchen knives, leaving Bucknall with a head injury requiring hospital treatment. Jurors were not told of the German allegations or that Alfatih had been under counter-terrorism surveillance after earlier release on bail. He has been in custody since the attack and is due to be sentenced on 11 January.
Any UK sentence must be served before extradition proceedings at Westminster Magistrates’ Court can proceed.
The case has prompted scrutiny of Home Office decision-making. Asylum was granted under Theresa May and citizenship under Priti Patel, despite publicly available images linking Alfatih to Haniyeh at a time when Hamas’s military wing was already proscribed. The Home Office has said there is no place for those who facilitate terrorist attacks and is understood to be reviewing the citizenship grant. Current ministers have described the original decisions as a failure of the previous administration.