Man Convicted of Attempted Knife Attack on London Israeli Embassy; Nun Assaulted in Jerusalem

A London court found Abdullah Albadri, 34, guilty of preparing terrorist acts and possessing two bladed articles after he tried to scale the Israeli embassy's fence with knives on April 28, 2025. The Old Bailey jury reached a majority verdict following nearly 14 hours of deliberation on May 1, 2026.

Israeli police arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of racially motivated assault after he pushed a French Catholic nun to the ground and kicked her near Jerusalem's Old City on April 28, 2026.

U.K. via small boat from France on April 12, 2025, marking his second illegal Channel crossing in four years. He had previously claimed asylum in August 2021 but returned to France inadvertently.

After being denied accommodation on April 16, 2025, as his application was treated as a further submission, Albadri slept rough and borrowed lodging from the Kuwaiti community in London. He copied a verse titled 'the benefit of martyrdom,' later found on him during arrest.

Wearing a red and white traditional Arabic scarf wrapped around his head and sunglasses, he walked for an hour to the embassy in Kensington, praying throughout the journey.

Upon arrival, Albadri saluted two diplomatic protection officers and jumped onto the 8ft-high railings. PC Nicholas Cox and PC Libby Chessor grabbed him, freed his stuck foot, and dragged him to the ground. Five officers, including one in plain clothes with a handgun, held him down and handcuffed him.

He asked, 'I want to make a crime inside there. Why are you stopping me? ' Officers discovered the martyrdom note and two red and white-handled knives with 10cm blades on him. Albadri's father, a police officer, funded his schooling, but his Bedoon ethnicity barred him from higher education, leading him to activism and five years in Kuwaiti prison.

He cited motivation from Israel's war in Gaza, telling officers he aimed to stop a war on children. In the Jerusalem incident, video released by Israeli police showed the attacker, wearing a Jewish kippah and tzitzit, running up behind the 48-year-old nun, pushing her face-first onto a rock, and kicking her repeatedly until a passerby intervened.

The assault occurred in broad daylight near King David’s Tomb and the Cenacle on Mount Zion, outside Zion's Gate in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

The nun, a researcher at Jerusalem’s French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, suffered bruising and grazing to her face but no serious injuries. Police released footage of her bruised face and of the suspect being handcuffed on Wednesday, following the Tuesday attack.

Father Olivier Poquillon, director of the school, called it an 'act of sectarian violence' and expected swift action from authorities.

The incident follows a rise in harassment of Christians, with the Religious Freedom Data Centre recording 31 incidents in the first three months of 2026, including spitting and property defacement. Last month, an Israeli soldier vandalized a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in southern Lebanon; he and the filming soldier were jailed for 30 days.

Also last month, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, was blocked from performing Palm Sunday Mass at a church in Jerusalem.

Another incident involved an Israeli soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in a Christian neighborhood of southern Lebanon, prompting condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.