Killer ‘spent his gap year after college fighting with Libya jihadis’
BOMBER Salman Abedi was hospitalised fighting alongside jihadis in Libya on his gap year, it was claimed last night.
He was injured on the front line in Ajdabiya, eastern Libya, and taken to Turkey for treatment using a false passport, a source told the Mail.
The incident is believed to have take place in 2014, shortly after the Britishborn son of Libyan migrants left Manchester College having confessed to ‘anger management issues’.
He later returned to study business management at Salford University, before dropping out, smoking cannabis and descending into a fanatical spiral that culminated in Monday’s atrocity. It has also emerged that:
He travelled to Libya, Turkey and Germany in the days before the bombing;
Authorities in Dusseldorf – a hotbed of extremism – are checking CCTV for any sign he met an accomplice;
Abedi carried the bomb in a £22 rucksack bought from a local Sports Direct; and
Experts are examining the possibility that an accomplice watched him as he entered the Manchester Arena’s lobby.
Abedi left Manchester College in 2013 after punching a girl for wearing a short skirt. He told his headmaster there were ‘a lot of things going on’ with his family, and that two of his brothers were fighting in Libya. It now appears Abedi went to join them – and a family friend claims it was not his first foray into armed conflict.
The source said Abedi also went to Libya with his father during the 2011 uprising, aged just 16.
While there he fell under the influence of a radical preacher named Abdul-Basit Ghwela, according to a US official.
The Canadian dual national has been accused of recruiting young men to wage jihad. His own son Auwais, 20, died fighting in Benghazi, in eastern Libya, last year.
Abedi is said to have been injured in Ajdabiya while fighting for Islamists, and was soon back in Manchester, studying at Salford.
The increasingly volatile 22-yearold was thrown out of a mosque earlier this year after erupting in anger when he was caught loitering in the building after prayers. Abdullah Muhsin Norris of the Salaam Community Centre said he was ‘very easy to get upset’.
This April, fearing his son was descending into a life of crime, Abedi’s father Ramadan reportedly summoned him and his younger brother Hashem to Libya and confiscated their passports – but the bomber apparently tricked his mother into returning his documents by telling her he was going on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Abedi left Libya on May 17 to fly home via Istanbul and Dusseldorf. From Turkey he could have caught dozens of direct flights to the UK – but instead he flew to Germany. His diversion has raised fears he may have met an accomplice in Dusseldorf to receive instructions or even bomb components.
The city gained notoriety two years ago when it emerged that the British IS executioner MohamMohamed med Emwazi – known as Jihadi John – had travelled to Syria with a German jihadi from Dusseldorf.
It is also in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where Berlin Christmas market killer Anis Amri worshipped at jihadist mosques.
One theory is Abedi may have been part of a larger cell including Abrini, the Brussels bomber nicknamed the ‘Man in the Hat’. Abrini is known to have visited Manchester in 2015, and the explosives in this week’s bomb were the same as those used in the Paris and Brussels attacks, a US lawmaker said.
Back in Britain, Abedi is now known to have strolled into Manchester’s retail district at about 8pm last Friday, withdrawing £250 from a cash machine and shopping for a rucksack that was used to hold his shrapnel bomb.
He is thought to have bought the black 35-litre Karrimor Jura bag, which has distinctive grey trim and turquoise lining, for £22 in a branch of discount retailer Sports Direct.
The killer spent his final hours in a £75-a-night city centre apartment, which police later raided. He is thought to have been there as recently as 7pm on Monday. It is less than two miles from Manchester Arena where, shortly after 10.30pm that night, he triggered the bomb filled with nuts, bolts, screws and nails that killed 22 and injured 119.
Intelligence officers are examining the possibility he may have had an accomplice who watched him. Evidence from the crime scene leaked by the US apparently pointed to a remote detonator, to enable someone else to set it off.
It suggests another jihadist could have watched Abedi, standing ready to set off the bomb if he baked out at the last minute. However, initial analysis suggests Abedi blew himself up.
‘Very easy to get upset’