A 21-year-old Jewish man who made death threats against two mosques in Manchester has been jailed for over two years.
Gabriel Levy made an anonymous phone call to Al-Sunnah Mosque in Cheetham Hill in October 2025, during which he threatened to kill worshippers.
During the chilling encounter, he told the call receiver: “I’m going to come to your mosque and kill you.”
A subsequent investigation found that Levy had also made a threatening call to Iqra Mosque in Manchester, where he told a member of staff: “I am going to kill you Muslim.”
Police later uncovered messages on Levy’s phone containing Islamophobic and racist language, as well as other hate speech.
During his arrest, Levy admitted making the calls, saying he had been angry about recent events he had seen in the news.
He claimed the threats were made in response to an attack at a Manchester synagogue two days earlier, in which a man drove a car into pedestrians before stabbing worshippers at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation during Yom Kippur.
Levy pleaded guilty to two counts of making threats to kill and was sentenced to 28 months in prison at Leeds Crown Court.
Calls for increased mosque security
The Forum of Muslim Organisations (FMO) in Greater Manchester has called on the government to urgently provide dedicated security funding for mosques to help protect worshippers.
The organisation stressed that nobody should be targeted or attacked because of their faith or identity, “whether Muslim, Jewish or indeed of any other faith and none”.
The FMO said several mosques in Greater Manchester had been targeted in recent years, including Manchester Central, Elaf and Nasfat mosques. It also highlighted the firebombing of the family home of an imam in Bolton.
“FMO calls for the scourge of Islamophobic attacks to be treated with due seriousness and for mosques to be granted Government allocated funding for security with urgency.”
The group also raised concerns about media coverage, questioning whether threats and attacks against Muslim communities receive the same level of prominence and seriousness as incidents involving other faith communities.
Aamir Sajad, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “No one has the right to make other people feel like their life is at risk just for doing their job.
“Gabriel Levy gave no thought to who was at the other end of the phone when he recklessly called two mosques to make these terrifying threats. He claimed that he had no real intention of causing any harm – but this means nothing to those on the receiving end of these types of illegal and intimidating communications.
“Death threats in any form have a severe impact on those who receive them, and we are grateful to the victims in this case for coming forward.
“Today’s sentencing shows that threats to kill and Islamophobic hate crime will always be treated extremely seriously by the CPS and we will take swift and decisive action when seeking these convictions.”
