British intelligence failed to ‘join the dots’ and stop 2017 Manchester suicide bomber
Salman Abedi had been known to MI5 since 2014 but was not put under surveillance
It has been revealed that UK intelligence failed to pick up that the 2017 Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi, went through a rigorous application process to visit a known extremist in a British prison.
The cocktail of ingredients for a “wannabe” terrorist was in place, a British security official conceded in a parliamentary report published on Thursday.
Abedi – who killed 22 concertgoers in a suicide bombing – visited the prisoner, identified in media reports as Abdal Raouf Andallah, who was jailed for recruiting fighters to travel to Syria.
“It is reasonable to suppose… that the nature of the visit was a sort of junior want-to-be extremist in the shape of [Abedi], visiting someone to whom he looked up,” an MI5 officer said.
The prisoner was identified in the Intelligence and Security Committee only as a Category A inmate. This means Abedi would have been scrutinised before being permitted to make such a visit.
Despite this, and his travel record to his father’s homeland of Libya, Abedi was never recommended for the UK’s Prevent counter-extremism programme, much less monitored as a potential security threat.
The committee called for answers on why, despite visiting Andallah on more than one occasion and thereby alerting security services, “no follow-up action” was taken by either MI5 or police to investigate Abedi’s intentions.
The damning report investigated five terrorist attacks last year in Britain and said MI5 missed opportunities to prevent Abedi’s attack on an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena attended by an audience predominantly made up of young girls and their parents.
Abedi, 22, was a Briton born to Libyan parents and had been known to MI5 since 2014, having been briefly investigated by the agency. However, no surveillance or travel restrictions were placed on Abedi, meaning he could return undetected to Britain from Libya days before the bombing. It was in Libya that he was believed to have been taught how to make a bomb.
“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, we have concluded that, as a result of the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it were missed,” said MP Dominic Grieve, the committee’s chairman.
“The lessons from last year’s tragic events must now result in real action,” he said.
The Manchester Arena bombing was the deadliest of the five terror attacks that year. Twelve more people died in three vehicle attacks on Westminster Bridge, London Bridge and Finsbury Park in the capital.
MI5 failed to “join the dots” about the danger posed by Westminster attacker Khalid Masood, despite evidence that he had been in contact with known extremists on numerous occasions.
The report found that police had arrested the London Bridge ringleader, Khuram Butt, eight months before the attack took place, despite finding terrorist material which could have led to him being prosecuted.
MPs also criticised the handling by British authorities of the teenager who left a bomb on the London Underground in September 2017. The device, which only partially exploded at Parsons Green station, did not cause any fatalities.
The Home Office failed to work with an investigation into how Ahmed Hassan, the Parsons Green bomber, went undetected, the report said.
Iraqi refugee Hassan, who received a life sentence for the crime in March, arrived in Britain illegally in 2015.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said his team would respond to the report in due course.
“Following the attacks, the government, police and MI5 undertook a series of rigorous reviews to ensure we are all doing everything we can to tackle the evolving threat of terrorism,” Mr Javid said.
Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer said he would look “in detail” at the full report.
“There will be further scrutiny and examination into the circumstances of these attacks, including coronial inquests and other potential criminal proceedings, which may preclude us for the time from commenting publicly to some specific points raised,” Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said.
“In the meantime, we would like to reassure the public that ever since the attacks of last year we have sought to learn from what happened before, during and afterwards, and improve our wider operating model and ways of managing and mitigating the risk from terrorism.”