A Grande gesture for Manchester
Police admit terrorist was never referred for his extremist views despite warnings from the public
Ariana Grande will be joined by stars including Coldplay, Take That, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry when she returns to Manchester for a benefit concert on Sunday in aid of the victims of last week’s terror attack.
THE Manchester suicide bomber was previously known to police having been arrested for a string of criminal offences, it has emerged.
Salman Abedi was cautioned for theft, receiving stolen goods and assault, but his extremist views were not picked up on by authorities at the time, police have admitted.
Last night police also said that it appeared Abedi had mostly been working alone in the days before his attack.
Ian Hopkins, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, said the offences for which Abedi had been arrested were “relatively minor” and added he had not been referred to the Government’s counter-extremism programme, Prevent.
That was in spite of officials at the Didsbury Mosque in Manchester, where Abedi used to worship, and a number of residents in the local area claiming that they reported the 23-year-old after becoming concerned about his extremist behaviour.
Despite being arrested on numerous occasions, it is understood Abedi only had one conviction, for riding a scooter without a licence, for which he was fined. Mr Hopkins said as far as Greater Manchester Police were concerned Abedi had never been flagged up as a potential extremist.
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, has now ordered a review to establish what the security services knew about Abedi before last week’s atrocity, which killed 22 people.
Mr Hopkins said: “[W]hat I do know about Abedi, the terrorist, is that he was known to the police for some relatively minor matters – theft, receiving stolen goods, minor assault. Those were in 2012.
“You know there has been a lot of reporting and people commenting that he was reported to us on a number of occasions. Abedi was not known to the Prevent programme... (he) was not on any sort of Prevent agenda… Obviously I am not privy to what the Security Service did or didn’t know about that individual at this time. But from a police perspective that’s what I knew.”
Mr Hopkins said investigators would “leave no stone unturned in trying to nail down” Abedi’s last movements.
Police said it was becoming apparent from inquiries that “many of his movements and actions have been carried out alone” in the four days before his attack, adding: “It is vital that we make sure that he is not part of a wider network and we cannot rule this out yet.”
Yesterday an Army bomb disposal unit carried out searches at a house in Wigan, for a second time. A 33-year-old man arrested in Wigan remains in custody on suspicion of terrorism offences.
Mr Hopkins suggested that some of those arrested could face conspiracy to murder charges.
He said: “From probably about three or four days ago we had specialist Crown Prosecution lawyers in working with us, starting to build charges as we gather the evidence to hopefully what will be charges in relation to the Terrorism Act and conspiracy to murder.”
He added that 18 scenes were still being guarded and forensically examined across Greater Manchester.
♦ The head of the national body for police commissioners has resigned after being told it would be inappropriate for him to appear on Question Time following the Manchester attack. Nazir Afzal was advised against going on the show because of the potentially controversial policing issues that might be raised, but stepped down in order to go ahead with the appearance last week.
There are many reasons why neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Theresa May feel very comfortable about being drawn into an election discussion on national security issues. For the Labour leader, it invariably means, as Mr Corbyn discovered when scrutinised by the likes of Andrew Neil and Jeremy Paxman, that he has to justify his historic support for terrorist groups such as the IRA, Hamas and Hizbollah, as well as his well-documented opposition to Trident.
For Mrs May, the criticisms relate to more contemporary concerns, not least her handling of counterterrorism policy during the six years she served as home secretary before becoming Prime Minister.
Mrs May’s supporters will claim that, with the exception of the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich four years ago, Britain suffered no major terror attack on her watch, and the security services thwarted a number of major plots, while making sure the 2012 London Olympics passed without incident.
Yet a different narrative is starting to emerge as a result of the investigation into the Manchester bombing, one where the Government has been less than efficient in tracking the activities of known jihadi groups.
It will be some months before we know the outcome of the internal investigation MI5 is conducting into the warnings it is said to have received about the radicalisation of Salman Abedi, who carried out the Manchester attack. But the information made public so far raises serious concerns about the effectiveness of the Whitehall counterterrorism machinery Mrs May has overseen since 2010 as both home secretary and Prime Minister.
Defending themselves against accusations that they failed to prevent Abedi from carrying out his attack, security officials have pointed to the size of their caseload, where they are monitoring the activities of around 500 potential Islamist terrorists among the estimated 3,000 jihadi sympathisers that are said to be currently residing in the UK.
All the more reason, then, for the security establishment to enforce measures designed to prevent those not being directly monitored to indulge in terrorist acts. There is a raft of legislation to achieve these ends, from providing the authorities with powers to prosecute those accused of travelling abroad to fight with Islamist groups, to confiscating the travel documents of Islamist sympathisers.
And yet, as the Abedi case illustrates, there are clearly serious failings in the way these measures are being administered. MI5 now admits that Abedi, a British national of Libyan descent, had at one point been a person of interest to them, although not deemed to be a high priority. And yet he was allowed to travel freely to and from Libya – where it seems increasingly clear he was radicalised and trained for his deadly Manchester mission. Nor does any attempt appear to have been made to make him the subject of a temporary exclusion order (TEO), which provides the British authorities with the means to confiscate the travel documents of British subjects suspected of links with Islamist terror groups.
It now transpires there was very little chance of Abedi being subjected to a TEO because Mrs May and her security chiefs have only deemed it necessary to use this measure a grand total of once.
TEOS, moreover, were only introduced after the Conservatives abandoned the control orders introduced by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. These measures allowed the authorities to keep terrorism suspects in their homes without access to phone or internet. But they were rescinded by the Cameron government following a campaign mounted by the likes of Shami Chakrabarti, now one of Mr Corbyn’s key lieutenants, who claimed the measures infringed the suspects’ human rights.
For the sad truth is that, when it comes to confronting the modern curse of Islamist-inspired terrorism, neither Labour nor the Conservatives have covered themselves with glory. On the contrary, the inchoate response of politicians of all persuasions in the 16 years since the September 11 attacks means that we now have more Islamist terror cells threatening our liberty than ever before.
Consequently, one of the next government’s first priorities must be to undertake a radical review of the measures available to the security establishment to tackle this pernicious threat. And if this means the reintroduction of uncompromising measures such as control orders, then so be it. That is certainly the view of Lord Carlile, the Government’s former counter-terrorism advisor who says the introduction of measures such as the pre-trial tagging and a curfew regime helped keep the streets safe.
For at the heart of any new policy must be the explicit understanding that the human rights of innocent Britons to pursue their lives without fear of being killed or maimed takes precedence over those of any would-be Islamist terrorist.