Manchester attacker’s links to failed UK suicide bombing
How much did intelligence services know about the fanatic’s contacts?
THE Manchester Arena bomber had links to a suspected extremist jailed over a failed UK suicide attack, it emerged yesterday.
Salman Abedi, 22, was in contact with a Muslim preacher who was a ‘close associate’ of Islamic convert Nicky Reilly.
Reilly had tried to bomb a cafe in Exeter
nine years to the day before Abedi’s 2017 attack. Carnage was avoided only because one of the devices exploded in his face as he prepared them in the toilet of the Giraffe restaurant. Abedi had comforted the preacher – Mansour al-Anezi – on his death bed in January 2017. Five months later Abedi blew himself up at the end of a pop concert.
Paul Greaney QC, counsel to the inquiry into the Manchester atrocity, said Abedi missed a scheduled prison visit to see another convicted terrorist to be with Mr al-Anezi because he was dying of cancer – and to attend his funeral on January 17, 2017.
After the attack, ‘various items related to Anezi’ were found at the Abedi family home in Fallowfield, south Manchester. Kuwaiti national Mr al-Anezi led prayers at a mosque in Plymouth, where Reilly lived.
Reilly had a mental age of ten and changed his name to Mohamed Saeed Alim after being recruited by extremists over the internet. He was jailed for life in January 2009 after his bungled suicide attack. He killed himself in prison seven years later.
Mr Greaney told the inquiry, which is being held at Manchester Magistrates’ Court, that questions would be asked of the intelligence services about what they knew about Salman Abedi, who had been on their radar since March 2014. Mr Greaney said MI5 knew Abedi had visited Abdalraexactly
‘They talked about martyrdom’
ouf Abdallah, 27, who was jailed for more than five years in July 2016 for trying to help other Manchester fanatics join extremists in Syria – but assessed this did not justify re-opening an investigation into him.
On at least two separate occasions, MI5 received intelligence about Abedi, the significance of which was not fully appreciated at the time, but with hindsight was ‘highly relevant’.
The bomber had been flagged as requiring further investigation, and a meeting about him had been scheduled for May 31, 2017. It never happened because Salman carried out his attack nine days earlier.
Mr Greaney said police had discovered ‘frequent phone contact’ between al-Anezi, Salman Abedi and his younger brother Hashem, now 22, in October and November 2016, seven months before the Manchester bombing, which killed 22 people as they left an Ariana Grande concert.
Police have been unable to ascertain exactly what the trio were talking about, the barrister added.
The court also heard Salman visited Abdallah twice in prison in the months before the Manchester Arena bombing. Greater Manchester Police had since discovered that Salman and Abdallah, who was shot and paralysed while fighting in the Libyan revolution in 2011, were in ‘regular telephone contact’ from 2014. They had talked about ‘martyrdom’.
The inquiry was also shown previously unseen photographs of the
Abedi brothers, taken from their older brother Ismail’s social media. They included one of Hashem with a rocket launcher on his shoulder.
Mr Greaney said it was the inquiry’s job to work out how Salman had been radicalised and by whom. Last month Hashem was jailed for a minimum 55 years after being found guilty of 22 counts of murder and helping his brother build the bomb. The inquiry continues.