How security agencies, police and Home Office missed chances to stop Manchester bombing
Analysis: Report by the Intelligence and Security Committee charts how series of mistakes allowed Salman Abedi to strike
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The atrocity in the Manchester Arena was particularly shocking even at a time when jihad had come to Britain and Europe with increasingly savage attacks. It was a suicide bombing targeting young fans at a concert by Ariana Grande, the intent to murder and maim in a packed and confined space with little chance of escape.
Now, in a report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), comes the details of systemic failures by the security agencies, police and the Home Office that helped enable Salman Abedi to carry out his personal act of jihad with a homemade explosive device.
The document charts how a series of mistakes allowed 22-year-old Abedi, born in Manchester to Libyan parents, to murder 22 people and injure more than a hundred others on 22 May last year.
Abedi was allowed to visit a dangerous extremist in prison; allowed to go in and out of the country without any travel restrictions despite being a suspect; allowed to be out of the Prevent programme that is supposed to counter radicalism and allowed to mount, through the failures, his attack.
Dominic Grieve, the Conservative MP who chairs the ISC, said: “What we can say is that there were a number of failures in the handling of Salman Abedi’s case and, while it is impossible to say whether these would have prevented the devastating attack on 22 May, we have concluded that, as a result of the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it were missed.”
There was also, the ISC stated, another shortcoming in the investigation over Abedi that caused “serious concern”. But such was the “highly sensitive security aspects” of the issue that it would be raised with the prime minister in a separate report, which will remain classified.
The death of Abedi does not end the legal proceedings on the Manchester case. There is an arrest warrant issued in this country for his brother Hashem who is being held in a Libyan jail.
The two brothers travelled to Libya together in April last year, a month before Salman returned to Manchester to carry out the attack. Last week, Fayez al-Sarraj, the head of the Libyan administration that is internationally recognised, claimed that Hashem Abedi may be extradited back to the UK in a matter of weeks.
He said: “I think from here to the end of this year we will finish all the legal procedure in Libya. We are fully cooperating because we understand the suffering of the families of the victims of this terrorist attack ... According to the general prosecutor we can extradite. After we complete the legal process in Libya, it is only a matter of time.”
However, the writ of Prime Minister Sarraj’s government does not run far in the country. Hashem Abedi is being held by a militia, called Rada, only nominally under the jurisdiction of the justice ministry and talks are continuing about his future. Extradition may take place, say hopeful diplomatic sources, with former members of the radical LIFG (Libyan Islamist Fighting Group) said to be involved in the negotiations.
Salman and Hashem Abedi had travelled to Libya in 2011 with their father Ramadan and, it is believed, some members of the LIFG, during the revolution that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi to deliver medical supplies aid. Ramadan is now living back in Libya; he is not wanted in connection with the Manchester attack.
Salman had first come to the notice of MI5 the previous year, 2010, when he had met a former member of the LIFG who was under low priority investigation. No further action was taken at the time.
By spring 2014, Salman Abedi was under active investigation when, the report pointed out, “MI5 and CTP [Counter Terrorism Police] received information informing them of SALMAN’s *** [redacted] frequent travel to Libya ***. However, he was not, at any point, subjected to any form of travel monitoring or travel disruption.”
Asked whether at the launch of the report whether he had received any details about what Abedi was doing in Libya during these visits, who he was meeting, from the security and intelligence agencies, Mr Grieve said he did not wish to make any comment.
However, Libyan sources, as well as security officials from the US and a European state have told The Independent that Salman Abedi was meeting a khatibas, battalion, linked to Isis including in its ranks some who have come from recently fighting in Syria.
Abedi had been to Sabratha and Sirte, which had become bases for Isis and from where attacks were planned not just in Libya but neighbouring Tunisia including at the beach resort at Sousse, killing 38 people, 30 of them British, and Bardo Museum in Tunis, with 21 deaths, in 2015.
The ISC report states that Salman Abedi’s telephone number came up as being in contact with an extremist suspect in 2013. The same number was found to be in contact with a “known extremist who was under investigation” in 2015. The same year a telephone number associated with Salman Abedi was in contact with “individuals of interest” overseas.
No further action was taken, the report notes, in relation to the telephone number at the time.
Salman Abedi, according to Libyan sources and a European security official, had kept in touch with Isis affiliates in Libya, sometimes through “cutouts”, to try to hide the link, living or travelling in Belgium, France and Germany. It is not known if these calls played any part in instigating the Manchester attack. They took place, however, when a series of lethal attacks were being carried out in Europe.
The report states in another section “The Manchester Arena bomber, SALMAN Abedi, visited prisoner *** on more than one occasion *** *** SALMAN visited him *** was a Category A prisoner when SALMAN first visited him ******”
The police had failed to take any action over the visits. The ISC states that it found “... the lack of action unsatisfactory ... There was a clear risk that these were meetings between two extremists.”
The ISC refused to name the prisoner or the prison. It was Abdal Raouf Abdallah and the visit was at HMP Altcourse. Abdallah, then 24, had been left paralysed after being shot during the Libyan civil war in 2011, the same time that the Abedis were in the country delivering aid and medical supplies. Abdallah was later accused of trying to facilitate the journey of jihadis to Syria.
Eventually, on 8 May 2017, MI5 decided that there should be a “prioritisation meeting” to discuss whether Salman Abedi should be the subject of “further low-level investigative enquiries in order to identify whether he had re-engaged in Islamist extremist activity”.
The meeting was scheduled for a date more than three weeks later on 31 May. Salman Abedi carried out his murderous attack nine days before it took place. The report states, “As MI5 put it ‘the plot then moved faster than the process’”.