A 21-year-old British Jewish man has been jailed for 28 months after making death threats against two Manchester mosques.
Gabriel Levy, of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, pleaded guilty to two counts of making threats to kill and was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court yesterday.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Levy made an anonymous phone call to Al-Sunnah Mosque in Cheetham Hill on the afternoon of October 4, 2025. Using a withheld number, he told the person who answered: “I’m going to come to your mosque and kill you.”
Police attended Levy’s home in Wakefield just hours later and seized his mobile phone.
During his arrest, Levy admitted making the call because he was angry about what he had recently seen in the news, according to the CPS.
He claimed his actions were in response to the Manchester synagogue attack two days earlier, when a British-Syrian man drove a car into pedestrians and stabbed worshippers at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation during Yom Kippur. Two people were killed.
However, investigators later discovered that Levy had made another threatening call on the same day to a different mosque.
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He contacted Iqra Mosque in Manchester and told a staff member: “I am going to kill you Muslim.”
The CPS said officers also uncovered messages on his phone containing Islamophobic and racist language, as well as hate speech.
Levy was ultimately given a 28-month prison sentence, including an additional 10 months under a hate crime sentencing uplift applied for by CPS prosecutors.
Aamir Sajad, a Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS Yorkshire and Humberside, 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.”
Levy had previously pleaded guilty to one count of making a threat to kill at Leeds District Magistrates Court on October 6, 2025, and admitted a further count at Leeds Crown Court on July 17, 2026.
The case highlights the threat faced by Muslim places of worship following periods of heightened communal tension, with the CPS stressing that Islamophobic hate crime and threats to kill will be treated seriously by prosecutors.
