By Beth Abbit

Copyright manchestereveningnews

As more details about the Heaton Park Synagogue attacker come to light, my colleague Paul Britton has spoken to a woman the terrorist married in an Islamic ceremony. During this exclusive interview , the mum revealed how Jihad Al-Shamie begged her to secretly be his ‘second wife’ after telling her they could only be in a relationship if they were man and wife. The killer finally admitted that he already had a wife and a child in Manchester. The woman told Paul how she initially believed she was in love with Al-Shamie, but he went on to abuse her both mentally and sexually, ‘constantly’ lying to her to keep his secret safe. Get news, views and analysis of the biggest stories with the daily Mancunian Way newsletter – sign up here “He was nice, then he was vile. Nice. Vile,” she said. “It was his way or no way. He said that before we had a relationship, we needed to be married.” Al-Shamie is said to have had relationships with different women – and possibly more marriages. In one message to the woman he said: “Look I’m gonna be honest with you. I do have a wife and a baby son at home. I didn’t tell u because I really liked you and wanted u to be my 2nd wife but I didn’t know how u wud react.” Then, in another message, he told her: “In Islam a man can have up to 4 wives but these days most women don’t accept it, but I shouldn’t have lied. It was wrong of me.” He went on to tell the woman that he ‘loves her’ and is ‘crazy about you’ – and how he wanted children with her. “My first wife accepts and knows about us,” Al-Shamie wrote. “Please forgive me for the lies.” The woman first met Al-Shamie on the Muslim dating app Muzz, formerly known as Muzmatch just before Christmas 2021. They married a month later exchanging vows in a ‘Nikah’ ceremony. In a voicemail shared with the M.E.N the terrorist can be heard telling her: “Allah will forgive you for your shortcomings.” Detectives have been searching Al-Shamie’s home in Prestwich and examining digital devices to establish a motive. Counter-terrorism police say enquiries are continuing across Greater Manchester. “I enjoy the green space because I have a dog. It’s nice to have,” says Nikki Christie, five years after the first plans to build offices on New Islington Green were submitted. “There’s always construction around here so it’s a bit much [to have more]. More offices would not be a positive thing for me.” More than 5,000 residents signed a petition to stop developers’ moving in on the land. But London-based General Projects’ plans for five office blocks constructed around the tram stop were approved by Manchester council in December 2020. But work has still not started and a revised project is yet to receive planning permission more than 18 months after it was submitted. It’s left locals in limbo, as Ethan Davies reports here. Party conferences often include elements of the bizarre. And having Margaret Thatcher’s raincoat looming over delegates at Tory Conference in Manchester this week will have done little to dispel that feeling. So it can’t have felt out of place to hear how a barefoot Rishi Sunak made the decision to scrap HS2 in his hotel room this time two years ago. As our Politics Writer Joseph Timan reports , while Andy Burnham and others from Greater Manchester were locked out from conversations about the future of the high-speed railway, another Andy found himself in Rishi Sunak’s bedroom. Andy Street – then Conservative mayor of the West Midlands – was invited to the Prime Minister’s hotel room to make his case to save the Northern leg of the controversial project. Speaking at conference this week, the ex-mayor recalled talking to Mr Sunak at the height of what he called the ‘battle of Manchester’. Andy Burnham has admitted that setting targets for private developers to build or pay for affordable housing ‘doesn’t work’. The Greater Manchester mayor told an event at the Conservative Party conference that councils should build more housing instead. During the Centre for Cities event in Manchester on Monday, the Labour mayor repeated his calls for all of the £39bn set aside for housing nationally in the coming years to be spent on building council homes. Day to day, Louise Olson offers treatment and reconstructive surgery to people with urinary issues. Until recently, her patients tended to be older. But in the last year there has been a long queue of young people waiting for her help all with one thing in common – ketamine addiction. “The majority have been using it since their mid teens,” she says. “And they all say if they had known the effects on the bladder, they never would have used it. But hindsight is 50/50.” With a growing trend of young teenagers experimenting with ketamine here in Greater Manchester, Dr Olson has described the effect on the body and the treatments available. Thursday: Overcast. 15C. Roads: A5067 Chester Rd westbound, Old Trafford , closed for roadworks between Talbot Rd and Bridgewater Way between 9.30am and 3.30pm until October 31. A6 Chapel St westbound, Salford , closed for long-term roadworks between Blackfriars Rd and New Bailey St until January 19. A577 Mosley Common Road closed in both directions due to roadworks between A580 East Lancashire Road and Ashdown Drive until October 21. It’s been more than a decade since Lady Gaga visited Manchester, but she certainly made up for it during her first show here last night . As Adam Maidment comments, the high fashion, high stakes production was an “exhausting-in-the-best-way run-through of 30 songs”. In a show he describes as “Alice in Wonderland meets The Phantom Of The Opera”, Gaga delivers an “undeniable career highlight”. But before the Oscar, the many tours and her Olympic performance, our Lifestyle Editor Dianne Bourne actually met Gaga in… Whalley Range . As Dianne explains in this entertaining piece , Gaga was there to support the Body Positive North West team who were creating a new garden for people living with HIV. “Walking along the sunny, tree-lined Russell Road with large black-rimmed glasses, her long blonde hair poker straight and a giant saucer hat on her head, she looked every inch the megastar,” she writes. “I asked her how she liked Whalley Range and she said: “It’s been so amazing coming here today, the volunteers were so cute because they didn’t know I was coming. “They looked up and were saying ‘that chick looks like Lady Gaga’.”” You can read the piece here.