Four men pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey on Friday to destroying four Jewish community ambulances in a Golders Green arson attack that caused about £1m of damage. Saif Ali was in the dock, while Hamza Iqbal, Rehan Khan and Judex Atshatshi entered their pleas by video link from jail.
The attack happened on the morning of 23 March, when four ambulances belonging to Hatzola were set on fire while parked near a synagogue in north London. The blaze spread fast enough to blow up gas canisters inside the vehicles, and nearby flats and a synagogue were also damaged. Prosecutors said three of the men set fire to the fully stocked ambulances while a fourth waited in a blue Toyota Avensis.
The scale of the loss gives the case its weight. Alongside the ambulances, four electrical charging stations and cables worth about £5,000 each were damaged, and investigators said the fire caused a total bill of about £1m. Hatzola, a Jewish charity founded in 1979 and run by volunteers, provides free medical transportation and emergency response to Jewish and non-Jewish people across north London.
That service made the target more than just a row of parked vehicles. Leo Seelig, the prosecutor, suggested the attack had a terrorist connection, and counter-terror police carried out the investigation after the arrests. Prosecutors said they believe it was a targeted attack against the Jewish community, but no mention was made in court of any possible proxies working for Iran, even though earlier checks had examined that possibility in relation to attacks on Jewish sites in London.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb ordered pre-sentence reports for Iqbal, Khan, Atshatshi and Ali, and sentencing will not come until the spring of 2027 after a separate trial ends. The guilty pleas close one part of the case, but the next phase will test how the court weighs a fire that hit emergency vehicles, a synagogue and nearby homes in one of London’s most sensitive streets.
