TERROR ‘NETWORK’ SUSPECTED IN U.K. BOMBING

Links seen to Paris, Brussels attacks

British investigators are exploring the possibility that the same cell linked to the Paris and Brussels terror attacks was to blame for the bombing that killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena, two officials familiar with the investigation said Wednesday.

Investigators were also assessing whether Salman Abedi, the suspected bomber in the attack Monday on a pop concert in the British city, may have been connected to known militants there. Abedi, a 22-year-old British citizen born to Libyan parents, died in the attack.

Abedi’s father, Ramadan Abedi, was allegedly a member of the alQaida-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting group in the 1990s, according to a former Libyan security official, Abdel-Basit Haroun. The group was founded in 1995 to pursue the assassination and violent overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi’s dictatorship.

The elder Abedi denied that he was part of the militant group and told The Associated Press that his son was not involved in the concert bombing and had no connection to militants.

“We don’t believe in killing innocents. This is not us,” the 51-year-old Abedi said from Tripoli.

Police said Wednesday they had not yet found the bomb maker in the Manchester Arena attack, indicating Salman Abedi was part of a larger cell.

“It’s very clear this is a network we are investigating,” Chief Const. Ian Hopkins said.

An al-Qaida bombmaker who fled to Libya lived in the same street as Abedi and the security services are probing possible links between the two, according to The Telegraph. Abd al-Baset Azzouz was identified as one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists by U.S. authorities after setting up a training camp in Libya.

Both the Azzouz and Abedi families lived in the same street in about 2000, according to records seen by The Telegraph.

After that they lived in homes never more than two kilometres from each other as part of a tight-knit community of Libyan dissidents opposed to Gadhafi.

Security sources say police are investigating whether Abedi could have been supplied with a bomb made by Azzouz, or taught to make one by him.

The bomb was so complex it could only have been made by an expert, leaked crime scene pictures suggest. Photographs show a trigger switch with a tiny circuit board soldered into the end, which experts say could point to a remote-control or timer built into the bomb to ensure an accomplice could detonate it if Abedi lost his nerve.

Investigators believe the bomb, packed with bolts and screws, was contained in a lightweight metal case carried in a Karrimor knapsack. They also found the remains of a 12-volt battery.

Azzouz was a prominent member of the LIFG. Azzouz, 50, a father of four, was arrested in the U.K. in 2006 by counter-terrorism police but freed on bail. He left the U.K. in 2009, travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he became a close lieutenant of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaida. Questions have been raised over why he was allowed out of the country.

Two years later, Azzouz returned to Libya to run alQaida operations there. U.S. authorities said in 2014 he was training 200 to 300 militants and described him as an expert in bomb-making.

A UN terror designation list published last year linked Azzouz to both Islamic State and to al-Qaida and suggested he was operating in the eastern part of Libya, which was an Islamic State stronghold.

British authorities were also exploring whether the bomber, who grew up in Manchester, had links with other cells across Europe and North Africa, according to two officials familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

They said one thread of the investigation involves pursuing whether Abedi could have been part of a larger terror cell that included Mohamed Abrini, otherwise known as “the man in the hat,” with connections to the Brussels and Paris attacks in 2016 and 2015 respectively. Abrini visited Manchester in 2015.

Investigators were also looking into possible links between Abedi and Abdalraouf Abdallah, a Libyan refugee from Manchester who was shot in Libya and later jailed in the U.K. for terror offences, including helping Stephen Gray, a British Iraqi war veteran and Muslim convert, to join fighters in Syria.

Other Manchester connections under investigation, the officials said, include a 50-year-old former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Ronald Fiddler, also known as Jamal al-Harith. The Briton blew himself up at a military base in Iraq in February. He was one of 16 men awarded $17.4 million in compensation in 2010, when Britain settled a lawsuit alleging its intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Another possible link under investigation is whether Abedi had ties to Raphael Hostey, a jihadist recruiter who was killed in Syria, the officials said.

Ramadan Abedi said he spoke to his son five days ago and that he was getting ready for a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. He said that his son visited Libya a month and a half ago and was planning to return to Libya to spend the holy month of Ramadan with the family. He also denied his son had spent time in Syria or fought with the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the concert bombing.

“Last time I spoke to him, he sounded normal. There was nothing worrying at all until … I heard the news that they are suspecting he was the bomber,” the elder Abedi said.

He confirmed that another son, Ismail, 23, was arrested Tuesday in Manchester. A third son, 18-yearold Hisham, was arrested in Tripoli late last night, according to a Libyan government spokesman, Ahmed bin Salem. The elder Abedi was arrested shortly after speaking to the AP, Salem said.

The anti-terror force that took Hisham Abedi into custody said the teenager had confessed that both he and his brother were members of the Islamic State group and that Hisham Abedi had been aware of the details of the Manchester attack.