‘I’d like to visit them in prison and ask why?’: Fears linger at Galway mosque targeted by bomb plot

Galway’s imam has said he wants to meet the three men involved in a far-right plot to attack his mosque in the city with pipe bombs to ask them what their motivation was.

Garret Pollock (36), Karolis Peckauskas (39) and Darren Gorman (34) were last week sentenced to a combined 26 years in prison for attempting to engage in terrorist activity.

Judge Caroline Biggs, presiding at the three-judge Special Criminal Court, sentenced Pollock, of Kilhorne Greene, Annalong, Co Down, the man deemed the most culpable of the three, to 10½ years, with the final year suspended.

She sentenced Gorman, of O’Moore Place, Portlaoise, Co Laois, and Peckauskas, a Lithuanian national with an address at Newfoundwell Road, Drogheda, Co Louth, to eight years each, also with the final year suspended.

The three men apologised for the planned attack, which was foiled when gardaí carrying out random drug searches found explosive materials, weapons and evidence relating to a terrorist organisation calling itself the Irish Defence Army in a car in which Pollock and Peckauskas were travelling.

They were charged that between November 4th and 5th, 2025, they attempted to engage in terrorist activity or terrorist-linked activity by attempting to set fire to the Maryam Mosque at Old Cottages, Monivea Road, Galway, an offence that was aggravated by hatred.

Imam Ibrahim Noonan said he wanted to meet the men.

“I’d like to visit them in prison and ask them: ‘Why? Why did you do this? What was the purpose of you doing this?’ And then, hopefully, show them who we are as a Muslim community,” he said.

He said he would address the two Irish men first.

“I would say: ‘We’ve been through our own troubles and our history. We know better than any other nation about being oppressed for our religion, about being oppressed for being Irish and being colonised in our own country’,” said Noonan, a former Catholic from Co Waterford who converted to Islam aged 23.

The 62-year-old thinks he may have seen the men, who he believes were monitoring the mosque from a white van for weeks in advance of the planned attack.

“I actually saw them and didn’t realise who they were and they were the people planning this attack. They definitely would have stared back at me when I stared at them. Every time I see a white van, I get a bit of anxiety of the flashback of that reality,” he said.

This week marks the first anniversary of the planned terror attack that Noonan said set out to “do severe damage; even kill people”.

Up to 200 people, including children, were in the mosque praying on the Friday morning the would-be attackers planned to strike. One year on, Ireland’s Ahmadiyya Muslim community is still shocked. “The realisation of it is quite traumatising,” said Noonan.

Of the 500 to 600 Ahmadis in Ireland, about 200 live in Galway and pray at the Maryam Mosque, named after Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Opened in 2014, Galway’s first and only purpose-built mosque was a project led by Muhammad Anwar Malik, the national president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association Ireland.

The mosque’s foundation stone was laid in 2010, when Malik – a consultant anaesthesiologist at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda – was living in Galway City and working at Galway Clinic and University Hospital Galway.

“I’m living here almost 26 years and I never felt unsafe before, so I was gobsmacked when I heard this,” said Malik, a native of Karachi, Pakistan, who has four children who are “proud to be Irish”.

“I was not expecting this because we are a very active community and we engage with people ... I was shocked.”

Arsalan Shahid, press secretary for Ahmadiyya Muslim Association Ireland, agreed. He said for an incident such as this to happen in a community-oriented and welcoming country such as Ireland was “disturbing and alarming”.

Malik thanked gardaí for protecting his congregation in Galway and the mosque’s neighbours, but he stressed “the fear caused by a threat like this does not disappear when a sentence is passed”.

Noonan said attendance in the mosque fell after the arrests because “people were scared”.

“Was this a one-off attempt? Will there be another attempt? That was the biggest impact,” said Noonan.

Attendance has increased again but fewer people go to early-morning prayers despite extra security measures having been put in since this incident, he said.

Malik said Irish people had “experienced prejudice” and, as a result, were “much more open-hearted”.

However, he said Islamophobia was on the rise and “a small part of society ... has been radicalised by these far-right people”.

Noonan described the Ahmadiyya community as “fundamental in the right way” and Malik said they were “known for peace efforts all over the world”.

Many Ahmadis fled persecution in Pakistan, and “thought they were safe” in Ireland until this planned attack, said Malik.

He added he was “a little bit disappointed by politicians and leaders, who should do more to condemn this [far right] ideology.

“Everyone deserves to feel safe in their place of worship. We ask political and community leaders to challenge hostility towards Muslims and immigrants, and to help our children grow up feeling secure and at home in Ireland.”

As for Noonan, he said that in time, he could forgive the bomb-plot trio, because “they were radicalised by some other people who put some nonsense in their head about Muslims.

“I think my anger towards them is much less now. When I see their photographs and look at their faces now, I hope they were genuine when they said they were sorry they were going to cause so much harm.”