Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Flat rented off Gumtree where bomber plotted
SALMAN Abedi practised making his bomb in a tower block flat rented off Gumtree. The terrorist paid £700 in cash to a fellow Libyan to stay in the 12th-floor council property weeks before the atrocity. He left suddenly at midnight in mid-may and flew to Libya – leaving behind “suspicious items” in the one-bedroom flat. They included chunks of metal, torn strips of curtain and disconnected smoke alarms. Abedi also kept all the windows and curtains closed. Aiman Elwafi, 38, who sub-let the property in Blackley, Manchester, went to police on Wednesday after realising the man who took the flat was Abedi. The divorced dad-of-one was arrested on suspicion of a terrorrelated offence and remains in police custody. His pizza takeaway in St Helens, Merseyside, was raided and several items seized. But his business partner Mohamed El-hudarey insists Elwafi is innocent – and the victim of “very bad luck”. He told the Mirror yesterday: “Aiman needed the money so sub-let the flat. He put it on Gumtree. “I think the advert may have been in Arabic. “Aiman said Salman’s younger brother was living there too. I think one slept on the couch and the other in the bed. “When Aiman saw the bomber’s face on the news he made the connection straight away. “He said to me, ‘The bomb was made in my flat’.” Armed officers raided the flat after using a drone to check the tower block. A shopkeeper told how Abedi visited his Fallowfield hardware store. He said: “He would be feeling things like metal screws and putting them down again. He never bought anything. It was very odd.”