Bomber’s younger brother held in Libya after ‘Isil confession’

THE youngest brother of the Manchester suicide bomber was in custody in Libya last night on suspicion of planning his own terror attack in Tripoli.

Hashim Abedi, 20, was arrested by the Rada Special Deterrence Force, a militia that claimed he had confessed to being a member of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil). He had reportedly been monitored by Libyan security forces and was recently sent more than £2,500 by Salman Abedi.

On Facebook, a militia spokesman alleged that Hashim had been aware of his brother’s plans to carry out the Manchester plot. A spokesman for the Libyan authorities told BBC2’S Newsnight: “His brother felt there was something going on there in Manchester and he thought his brother would do something Hashim Abedi was allegedly under surveillance by Libyan security services like bombing or attack. So after that, he told us, ‘Having internet, I see the attack in Manchester and I knew that’s my brother’.” The spokesman added that Libyan authorities were aware of Abedi going Tripoli on April 18 and believed he stayed for two or three weeks. He revealed that Abedi’s younger brother Hashim had been investigated for about a month and a half over suspicions that he was linked to Isil.

“We were not quite sure about this, but when we arrested and we asked him, he told us, ‘I have ideology with my brother’. Hashim told us, ‘I know everything about my brother, what he was doing there in Manchester’.”

The eldest Abedi brother, Ismail, 23, remained in custody last night after being arrested in Manchester.

Hashim had been to Libya on numerous occasions with his father, Ramadan, a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. One picture on Ramadan’s Facebook page shows Hashim, aged 15, posing with an automatic rifle.

Ramadan Abedi was also reportedly being held by Libyan authorities last night.