Manchester bomber was rescued from Libya by Navy
British vessel picked up teenager who later killed 22 people in attack on Ariana Grande concert
THE Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi was rescued by the Royal Navy from civil war in Libya three years before his deadly attack, it was revealed last night.
The rescue of Abedi – who was known to the security services at the time he left Britain for the war-torn country – enabled him to catch a flight home to the UK in August 2014, according to reports.
Nearly three years later – on May 23 2017 – he committed mass murder when he set off a bomb at the Manchester Arena that killed 22 people including seven children.
By the time of the bombing, security services were no longer monitoring him.
The revelation, reported in the Daily Mail, will enrage families who lost loved ones in the terror atrocity last year, and raises further fears over possible intelligence mistakes.
Abedi, then aged 19, was rescued from the Libyan coast by HMS Enterprise, according to the report, before being taken to Malta for his flight home. His younger brother Hashem, who is in jail in Tripoli facing trial over his alleged involvement in the Manchester attack, was also picked up by the Enterprise. It is understood they were part of a group of 100 British citizens escorted to safety.
A Whitehall source told the Mail: “For this man to have committed such an atrocity on UK soil after we rescued him from Libya was an act of utter betrayal.”
The paper also quoted sources in London and family friends in Libya who confirmed that Salman Abedi was on the Enterprise.
The brothers regularly travelled between their home in Manchester and Libya as their parents, Ramadan and Samia, were both living in Libya.
In 2014, the country was in the grip of civil war. HMS Enterprise, a survey ship, was diverted from routine operations in the Mediterranean to head to Tripoli to pick up Britons after the UK embassy suspended operations.
Clashes around the capital killed dozens of people every night at a time when the Foreign Office was advising against all travel to Libya. Airlines began cancelling flights, while Michael Aron, the British ambassador, oversaw some of the evacuations.
The brothers were on holiday in Libya at the time, and the Royal Navy was tasked with picking them up, along with other British nationals, on a list provided.
A review of Abedi’s massacre at the Ariana Grande concert by David Anderson QC found the bombing could have been averted “had the cards fallen differently.” It emerged MI5 had planned to discuss the threat posed by him nine days following the attack after he was flagged up for attention.
It was one of four terrorist strikes in Britain last year, and the review said MI5 had on two occasions received intelligence on Abedi, “whose significance was not fully appreciated at the time”. It is understood Abedi’s father had travelled back to Libya in time for the 2011 revolution, allegedly fighting against the Gaddafi regime with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
It is not certain whether the two brothers were with their father at the time of the revolution or instead in neighbouring Tunisia.
Security sources told the Mail they did not believe Abedi had been radicalised at the time of the Navy rescue.
‘For this man to have committed such an atrocity was an act of utter betrayal’
Abedi went on to study business management at Salford University, before dropping out. He later became brainwashed, they believe, after watching bomb-making videos on Youtube and terror material on other sites.
A government spokesman said: “During the deteriorating security situation in Libya in 2014, Border Force officials were deployed to assist with the evacuation of British nationals and their dependents.”