This is a man who has been with his brother from start to finish...

WHEN Salman Abedi detonated that huge bomb in his backpack as exhilarated kids and teenagers were leaving a pop concert at Manchester Arena, he wasn’t alone.

As he inflicted the most horrific single crime our city has witnessed, his cowardly, hate-filled younger brother Hashem Abedi was awaiting news 2,000 miles away in Libya.

Only Salman Abedi detonated the device, causing the blast that sent 3,000 pieces of shrapnel, flying like bullets across the foyer, killing 22 and maiming dozens more.

But Hashem was there in spirit and he was just as culpable as his brother for an unfathomable crime visited upon innocent people.

Hashem didn’t flick the switch, nor could he hear the dull groans of pain of those who had survived the blast.

But Salman, who was decapitated by the force of the blast, couldn’t have committed the mass-murder/suicide without him.

The suicide bomber looked to his younger brother as his munitions expert, quartermaster, driver and confidante.

Now, Hashem Abedi, college drop-out, takeaway delivery driver and petty thief, has been convicted of 22 counts of murder; attempting to murder those who survived the blast; and conspiracy to cause an explosion. The case’s senior investigating officer, Det Chief Supt Simon Barraclough, said: “He’s every bit as responsible as his brother Salman.

“The fact that he was in Libya when that bomb was detonated, for me, is utterly irrelevant. He was with his brother throughout the entire process of making this explosive and building this bomb.

“I believe he provided encouragement right up to the end, far from trying to dissuade him from doing anything and withdraw from the conspiracy, this is a man who has been with his brother from start to finish.”

Those convictions were the result of an amazing police investigation which saw Hashem extradited from Libya.

Disturbingly, police believe Hashem Abedi, with his technical knowhow and ability to source chemicals, could have gone on to commit another atrocity.

In April 2017, Salman and Hashem Abedi’s parents flew back to Manchester from Libya, where they were living at the time.

Police are confident the events of that month reveal an attempt to get the would-be terrorists miles away from Manchester, where they had set up a bomb factory.

Nine days after the Abedi parents, Ramadan, 52, and Samia Abedi, 52, arrived in Manchester they flew back to Libya with Salman, 22, and Hashem Abedi, then 20. The two young men were travelling on one-way tickets booked for them by their elder brother, Ismail Abedi. Once the family were back in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, it’s understood that Ramadan Abedi confiscated Salman Abedi’s passport.

But on May 18, 2017, after just over a month in Libya, Salman Abedi flew back to Manchester alone. It seems he had retrieved his passport and escaped his family’s home. The fact Hashem stayed behind in Libya has raised suspicion of the potential for another attack.

Once back in the UK, Salman Abedi went straight from Manchester Airport to Rusholme, where he and his brother Hashem had left a Nissan Micra.

They had bought the car hours before their parents had flown them out of the country, at a time when their terror plans had been thrown suddenly in turmoil.

Just before midnight on April 13, they had found the vehicle online and paid £230 cash for it.

They had then faced a race against time to clear out their bomb factory before they had to leave Manchester for Libya. Indeed, exactly 24 hours after they bought the car, they retrieved their explosive - a substance called TATP (triacetone triperoxide), chemicals and shrapnel from their 12th-floor bomb factory in Blackley.

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