Suspect tasered as homes raided across the city
COUNTER-TERROR officers have carried out a series of raids and arrests in their “fast-moving” probe, with witnesses telling how one suspect was tasered in a car park.
A local said the unnamed Libyan man, in his mid-20s, was then stripped by police.
The witness said of the arrest, in Nuneaton, Warks: “One of the officers was standing over the man, tasering him.
“The man looked Arab, in his early 20s. He was face down and wasn’t moving. They got him to his feet, stripped him to his underwear and put him in a white boiler suit.”
After the arrest on Wednesday night, police searched a property registered to Naser Elshetwi, who was previously shot during an attempted kidnapping in Libya.
Eight men are now being quizzed over possible links to suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, after more “significant” arrests.
EXPLOSION
They include the bomber’s older brother Ismail, and a man believed to be related to Abedi who was arrested in front of his wife and three children in Withington yesterday.
Locals claimed they heard an explosion as officers stormed his flat at 4am, before the Libyan suspect, who has not been identified, was led out by armed police.
Sanghamitra Das, 35, had spoken to the wife in a local park. She said: “That lady is from Libya. She said she came here six months ago. She doesn’t speak English, her elder daughter was translating.”
Bomb squad officers were later called to the flat, owned by an Iranian businessman based in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, and were seen removing a suspicious item.
A second Libyan suspect was arrested yesterday at an undisclosed location in Manchester, while a controlled explosion was carried out at a property in Moss Side.
Police say they have seized “very important” items in the raids. A property was also searched in Wigan, and bomb disposal officers called to a suspicious package in Hulme, later deemed safe. A woman held in Blackley on Wednesday has been released.