BOMBING SUSPECT QUIET, DEVOUT
Police seek accomplices of Salman Abedi, 22
The suspected suicide bomber who struck at a Manchester pop concert packed with teens was described by members of the city’s Libyan community Tuesday as “withdrawn” and “devout.”
Police identified the dead suspect as Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old who was reportedly born in Manchester to parents who had fled to the United Kingdom to escape the regime of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
“However he has not yet been formally named by the coroner and I wouldn’t wish to therefore comment any further about him at this stage,” said Chief Ian Hopkins of the Greater Manchester Police.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant did not name the attacker but described him in a statement as a “soldier of the Khalifah,” the term it often uses for terrorists inspired by the group’s violent ideology.
The Times reported he had recently visited Libya and investigators were trying to establish whether he had received terrorist training there from local ISIL or al-Qaida factions.
Calling the victims “crusaders” and depicting the target as a “shameless concert arena,” ISIL said the killings were “revenge for Allah’s religion” and a response to “transgressions against the lands of the Muslims.”
Police were trying to determine whether the attacker, who killed 22 and injured 59, worked alone or was part of a wider network, Hopkins said. A 23-year-old man was arrested and police searched Abedi’s south Manchester home.
“He was such a quiet boy, always very respectful towards me,” the Guardian newspaper quoted a member of Manchester’s Libyan community speaking about Abedi. “He is such an unlikely person to have done this.”
His father, who “comes and goes” between Manchester and Tripoli, was an “oddjob man” who performed the call to prayer at the Didsbury mosque, where Abedi and his brother worshipped, the Guardian reported.
British election rolls list Salman Abedi and Ismail Abedi as living at a modest red brick semi-detached house in a mixed suburb of Manchester where police performed a controlled explosion to enter the property on Tuesday afternoon, the Associated Press reported.
The little that is known at this point about Abedi “seems to fit into a pattern that has been seen in a number of places,” said Richard Fadden, who was the National Security Adviser to both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau.
“A second-generation immigrant, often from a Muslim country, who cannot reconcile his new life and that of his family with their lives in their country of origin and is somehow driven to violence,” he said.
“It also points, I believe, to the necessity for Canada and other Western countries to be concerned about — and do more about — the effective integration of newcomers. Better to do more before violent crimes occur.”
Alex Wilner, an assistant professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, also said Abedi’s profile was consistent with the “larger trends” emerging among radicalized Western citizens.
“Like many ISIS adherents, he’s a young man, born and raised in Europe to immigrant or refugee parents. We’ve seen a lot of that in recent months and years in attacks from Belgium to France, and from Germany to Russia,” he said.
“There’s obviously also a process of radicalization going on. We’ll find out more as the investigation continues, but it would be surprising if he hadn’t had some level of interaction, in person or online, with other radicals and terrorists.”
Following a series of attacks involving firearms, knives and vehicles driven into crowds, the suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert was a reminder that improvised explosives remain a preferred weapon for terrorists intent on causing mass casualties.
While attacks in Canada targeting Canadian Forces members involved a rifle, a car and knives, last August ISIL supporter Aaron Driver was killed by police in Ontario as he was leaving his home to carry out a suicide bombing.
“A suicide bomb is kind of a gold standard in terrorism, common across the globe and especially in the conflict zones of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Thousands occur each year,” Wilner said.
Knowing that bombs are relatively hard to build, ISIL has been encouraging other types of attacks. “And yet, for those able and willing, a suicide bombing provides a huge amount of terror and mayhem, precisely as we’ve seen in Manchester.”