SALMAN ABEDI: WHAT WE KNOW

The suspected suicide bomber who killed at least 22 people at a concert in Manchester, northern England, on Monday has been identified as 22-year-old Salman Abedi, British police said.

Abedi was born in Manchester in 1994 to parents of Libyan birth, US security officials said, citing British intelligence officials. Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed Abedi was born and brought up in Britain.

Media reports said Abedi’s parents fled Libya to escape the regime of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi. His parents emigrated to London before moving to the Fallowfield area of south Manchester, where they have lived for at least 10 years, the US officials said.

Newspapers said he was known to the security services and the Financial Times said he had turned to radical Islam in recent years.

Police raided a house in Elsmore Road in Fallowfield earlier on Tuesday.

A US government source said investigators were looking into whether Abedi had travelled to Libya and whether he had been in touch with Islamic State militants there. The

Times newspaper said Abedi was believed to have returned to Britain from Libya recently.

Abedi began studying business and management at Salford University in Manchester in 2014, a source told the Press Association, but he dropped out after two years and did not complete his degree.

He did not live in university accommodation, had not been in any trouble at the university, was not on any radar for pastoral or social care and was not known to have participated in any university societies. It is understood Abedi never met with the university’s resident imam.

A 23-year-old man arrested by police in a separate move in south Manchester in connection with the attack on Tuesday was believed to be Abedi’s brother, news reports said. Abedi had a sister named Jomana Abedi, the US security officials said.

Abedi’s family were closely linked to the Didsbury Mosque, a Victorian former Methodist chapel in a leafy suburb that was bought in 1967 by donors from the Syrian Arab community. His father Ramadan had sometimes performed the call to prayer and his brother Ismael had been a volunteer.

One senior figure from the mosque however, Mohammed Saeed, told The Guardian that when he once gave a sermon denouncing terror, Abedi stared him down. “Salman showed me a face of hate after that sermon,” Mohammed Saeed said of the 2015 encounter. “He was showing me hatred.”

Abdalla Yousef, a spokesman for the Didsbury Mosque, said while Abedi’s father and brother had prayed there Abedi had worshipped at another mosque. “I have managed to track down somebody who knows the family. He confirmed his father and sister and the rest of the family had moved to Libya and had moved there straight after the revolution after Gadhafi was killed,” Mr Yousef said.

He said it was possible the brothers had travelled between the two countries since then.

A trustee of the mosque, Fawzi Haffar, said Abedi’s father was currently in Libya and had been there for a while.

Abedi used an improvised explosive device, apparently packed with metal, to massacre concertgoers and end his own life.

Citing CCTV footage recovered by detectives, The Times reported Abedi had placed the device in a suitcase which he set on the ground before it detonated.