MANCHESTER BOMBING

Theresa May presided over ‘open door policy’ for Libyan terror suspects

SUICIDE bomber Salman Abedi was among a clutch of terrorist suspects who were cleared to travel to and from Libya with “no questions asked” when Theresa May was Home Secretary, it is claimed.

Some were Libyan exiles and some were born in Britain to Libyan parents like Abedi. They included members of a proscribed Islamic terrorist organisation linked to al-Qaeda and were able to join the 2011 uprising against the Gaddafi regime, even though some were subject to counter-terrorism control orders, effectively house arrest.

It is alleged that these orders were lifted, passports were returned and the security service MI5 assisted them in travelling to Libya to fight.

Theresa May was Home Secretary at the time –from 2010 until she became Prime Minister last year. Several foreign fighters now back in the UK have told the respected online news website Middle East Eye (MEE) that they went back and forth to Libya without hindrance while the fighting was going on.

Opponents of Colonel Gaddafi – such as Abedi’s Libyan parents – were given refuge in Manchester before the dictator was overthrown in 2011. Like them, their son went to Libya as the revolution gathered momentum, and returned there on several subsequent occasions. Sources spoken to by MEE suggest that the UK Government facilitated the travel of Libyan exiles and British-Libyan residents and citizens keen to fight against Gaddafi, including those it was deemed posed a potential security threat in the UK.

One British citizen with a Libyan background said he was “shocked” that he was able to travel to Libya in 2011 shortly after his control order was lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said the source, who wished to remain anonymous.

Members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who were opposed to Gaddafi’s regime, had their British passports returned to them as the conflict in Libya escalated in 2011 – even though LIFG was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2005 by the British Government, describing it as “part of the wider Islamist extremist movement inspired by al-Qaeda”.

Belal Younis, a British citizen, was stopped under “Schedule 7” counter-terrorism powers on his return to the UK after a visit to Libya in early 2011 and asked by an intelligence officer from MI5 if he was “willing to go into battle?” Later, while travelling back to Libya, Younis was again stopped by two counter-terrorism officers but was given clearance to pass when he handed them the telephone number of the MI5 officer – who called him back before he boarded the plane to tell him he had “sorted it out”,

Counter-terrorism expert Charles Bird, who worked for the Ministry of Defence before taking up a position at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University, said Libya’s porous borders still pose a problem to British security services.

“Manchester has been a centre for Libyan dissidents in the past few years,” he said. “Those who were opposed to Gaddafi, who were more militant, and who were given asylum in the UK, came to live in Manchester.

“Since the UK intervention in Libya which led to the overthrow of Gaddafi, Libya hasn’t really had a stable government. There are militias operating in various parts of the country. It’s basically got open borders so there are also extremists crossing the border from Mali, coming up through Niger. Once in Libya it’s not too difficult to cross to Europe.

“Now that Islamic State is being gradually defeated in Syria and Iraq,