The suspect in the Liverpool Remembrance Sunday bomb attack was a “kind” Christian who loved baking cakes, churchgoers have said.
The congregation at Emmanuel Church in Fazakerley, Liverpool, was said to be in shock after the news that the bombing at Liverpool Women’s Hospital involved Emad Al Swealmeen.
Al Swealmeen attended the church between 2017 and 2019, where parishioners knew him as Enzo.
Reverend Mike Hindley said: “Enzo was here for a couple of years until 2019 when we gradually lost touch with him.
“It’s just bewildering that a guy who was a really kind guy has ended up in that situation.”
He said the 32-year-old joined the church from Liverpool Cathedral and “made no secret” of the fact he had mental health problems.
He added: “I’m still processing it. It’s shocking to have somebody who you know who is going through something that has led them to a suicide bombing.”
Joy Gambardella, lay reader at the church, said Al Swealmeen had been a “lovely, lovely man” who was a “committed Christian”.
She told the PA news agency: “He used to love baking and he did a baking course, he also did pizza making.
“He used to make cakes for the church and sell them.”
She added: “I would never, ever expect he could have done something like that, ever.
“I think the crucial thing is what happened to him when everything locked down because that’s when everyone’s mental health went all over the place and we don’t know what happened to him.”
Al Swealmeen, who was born in Iraq, attended a cake-decorating course at the City of Liverpool College from 2018 to 2019.
Christian volunteers Malcolm and Elizabeth Hitchcott said he stayed with them in 2017.
Mr Hitchcott told BBC Radio Merseyside: “He arrived here on April 1, 2017. He was with us then for eight months, and during that time we saw him really blossoming in regards to his Christian faith.
“He really had a passion about Jesus that I wish many Christians had, and he was ready to learn.
“He was absolutely genuine, as far as I could tell. I was in no doubt by the time that he left us at the end of that eight months that he was a Christian.”
Liverpool Cathedral confirmed Al Swealmeen was baptised in 2015 and confirmed there in 2017, but lost contact with the cathedral the following year.
Mr Hitchcott said Al Swealmeen had been refused asylum in 2014 after he was sectioned following a mental health incident where he was waving a knife at people from an overpass.
A spokesman for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, which provides mental health services, said Al Swealmeen was not under their care at the time of the explosion, although he had received treatment in the past.
Counter-Terrorism Police North West said Al Swealmeen’s “episodes of mental illness” would form part of their investigation.
Police said he had lived at a property in Sutcliffe Street, in the Kensington area of Liverpool, for some time and began renting a property in Rutland Avenue, near Sefton Park, in April.
The force said “significant items” had been recovered from the Rutland Avenue address, where searches have been taking place since Sunday.
