Landlord who rented his f lat to the bomber
THIS is the landlord of the flat where the Manchester bomber is said to have holed himself up and planned the massacre.
Aimen Elwafi, 38, a divorced father-of-one, was still being questioned by police yesterday after subletting his council flat to Salman Abedi, who had responded to an advert on Gumtree.
Mr Elwafi’s friend and business partner Mohamed Elhudarey, 39, has told how the former lawyer from Libya had been the victim of ‘bad luck’ after believing he was loaning his home to a student and part-time delivery driver who needed somewhere to stay.
Mr Elhudarey, who is looking after Mr Elwafi’s seven-year-old son, said: ‘I’m sure about that [that he is innocent], that he’s done nothing wrong but it’s going to take some time for the police to do their investigations and to make sure everything is clear.’
Mr Elwafi went to his one-bedroom flat in a tower block in Blackley, north Manchester, after a phone call in March from his tenant Abedi, who said he had left in a rush and was going back to Libya. Abedi, who paid £700 in cash for the flat, which he rented for under two months, said he would leave the keys with a neighbour.
When Mr Elwafi returned there, the flat had a strong chemical smell, there were pieces of cut up fabric strewn around and a metal rod had been left inside the bathroom, it was claimed. The light fittings and smoke alarms had also been tampered with. Stickers of Disney charac- ters which had been stuck on the walls by Mr Elwafi’s son had been scribbled out in black pen. ‘These people think when you have images of a lion or something it is “kuffar”, against Islam,’ said Mr Elhudarey.
‘He [Mr Elwafi] said there was a very strange smell coming out of the carpet. He said to me that it smelled like chemicals or petrol.
‘When he told me this I thought maybe he was a drug dealer or having parties… but I didn’t ever think he was making a bomb in the flat.’
After hearing Abedi’s name on news reports, Mr Elwafi discovered that the jihadi had used his home as a base as he planned his suicide attack and handed himself in to police. The property is one of several linked to Abedi which have been searched by police since the bombing.