Posing with a gun, law student held in terror swoops
POINTING a gun at a camera as he sprawls across a bed, this law and criminology student is among the latest suspects held over the Manchester atrocity.
Zuhair Nassrat, 19, was arrested after police raided his family home – where suicide bomber Salman Abedi was invited to stay.
He was one of two arrested on Sunday evening and yesterday morning, along with a 23-year-old man at a flat in Shoreham, West Sussex. A trainee pilot was said to have lived at the address.
During the early hours of yesterday, police investigating last week’s attack also searched a house in Chester, where Zuhair Nassrat is a student, and in Whalley Range, Manchester.
One of three brothers, Zuhair was removed from his Libyan family’s home in Gorton, south Manchester, in handcuffs around 7pm on Sunday.
Neighbours said this was around half an hour after police ‘blew the door off’. A woman, believed to be his mother, and two children were also driven away but were not under arrest. People living nearby said Abedi, 22, often stayed with the family at the semi-detached property.
Neighbours said the elder Nassrat sons, Abdul and Loqman, travelled to Libya with their diplomat father Khalid to
‘Injuries on back from fighting’
fight in the overthrow of Colonel Gaddaffi in 2011.
‘They used to post pictures and videos of themselves holding AK47s and fighting on Instagram.
‘They were showing off about it,’ one neighbour who went to school with the boys said.
‘The eldest son [Abdul] had pictures of injuries on his back from fighting and came back to Gorton to get treated and get the fragments removed on the NHS,’ a neighbour added.
Several said Abdul, 24, travelled to Turkey three years ago to train as a pilot but never returned. The rest of the family, including Zuhair, temporarily returned to Libya and let out their home to tenants.
Pictures on social media showed Abdul posing with Abedi – as well as Zuhair with the bomber’s brother Hashim, 20, who is in custody in Libya on suspicion of being part of the same jihadi cell.
Loqman Nassrat, 22, who lives in Chester and also attends the city’s university, confirmed he knew Abedi when he was ‘younger’.
He said: ‘The Libyan community in Manchester don’t believe in any way that he was by himself, he had not got the capability. He doesn’t have it in him, he is not smart enough.’
Loqman said Abedi had stayed at the Nassrat family home for about six weeks in 2011, after his family left for Libya. He believes Abedi must have been radicalised in Libya as around two years ago he became more religious and began to lecture friends about drinking alcohol.
One neighbour said he saw Abedi at the Nassrat house as recently as last October.
Last August, Zuhair posted on Twitter that he had been given a place at Chester University to study criminology and law. His profile picture shows a man in camouflage holding a gun and he has made a string of posts sympathising with terrorism. The day of the 2013 Boston marathon bombings, he wrote: ‘I think the world just noticed something that happeneds [sic] everyday in Afghanistan, Palestine.’
The man arrested in Shoreham was detained after police raided a flat above a shop at about 3am yesterday. A Libyan man Aladeen Zakry, a trainee pilot, lives at the address five minutes from the seafront and is said to have family nearby.
Zakry – also known as Aladeen Sicri – is understood to have come to the UK when he was 18, lodging with John and Jenny Crump in Shoreham-on-Sea. They said he was a perfect lodger but around three years began to go missing for several days in London.
A Libyan family’s home was searched for several hours in Whalley Range but the occupants were said to be away and no arrests were made.