Abedi brothers ‘fled car crash weeks before attack’
WITNESS TELLS TRIAL HE WAS ABUSED FOR CALLING POLICE
MANCHESTER Arena bomber Salman Abedi and his brother Hashem fled the scene of a crash two months before the attack and called an eyewitness ‘p **** ’ for calling police, a jury heard.
The brothers ran away after crashing their silver Toyota Aygo into another car in Fallowfield on March 23, 2017 and failed to tend to the ‘traumatised and crying’ woman driving the other car, according to an eyewitness.
They were seen trying to repair the vehicle and ripping labels from cardboard boxes in the rear of their car then verbally abusing a pedestrian witness for calling police before running away in opposite directions, a jury at the Old Bailey in London was told.
The prosecution say the brothers were using the car as part of efforts to source ‘precursor chemicals’ used in the manufacture of TATP explosive used in the deadly attack but their plans were ‘thrown somewhat into disarray’ because of the crash.
Salman Abedi, 22, detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) packed with TATP while he was standing in the foyer of Manchester Arena as concert-goers were leaving an Ariana Grande performance on May 22, 2017. He killed himself and 22 others, some of them children, in the blast and hundreds more were hurt by 3,000 pieces of shrapnel packed into the device.
The prosecution say his brother Hashem helped him source the chemicals and shrapnel in the form of nuts and cross dowels for the bomb.
On the ninth day of the trial, a witness, Eddie Cooper, told jurors he was walking along Wellington Road when he saw the crash at the junction with Mauldeth Road West in Fallowfield.
The Aygo in which the brothers were said to be travelling suffered significant damage to its front when it hit another car, sending it spinning into a wall, the court heard.
The woman driving the other car was left ‘traumatised and crying,’ the court was told.
Mr Cooper told the jurors he was shocked that ‘no one from the other car came over to see if she was OK.’
“As I was walking over there were two males looking at the car trying to repair and trying to move it, trying to drive off,” said Mr Cooper. The bumper had come off the front of the car and the males were trying to put it back on and ‘get the car moving again,’ he said.
Mr Cooper said: “One of them I pretty much came face to face with. I was on the phone to the police telling them about the incident. I had to get the car registration of the car that was involved. As I was walking over to the two males, one of them approached me. He knew I was on the phone to the police and he called me a p **** .”
The jury was told that at the time the witness gave police descriptions of the two males: the driver was of middle eastern appearance with a light skin colour, aged about 20 and 6ft 1in and he was wearing a navy hat with a multicoloured bobble, a navy jacket and jogging bottoms; the passenger was a male with light brown skin, aged about 20, 5ft 11in, slim, with short dark brown hair and he was wearing a tracksuit and flip-flops. Asked what he thought of the ‘p **** ’ jibe, Mr Cooper said: “I was kind of shocked. Obviously I was on the phone reporting the incident. As soon as he said that to me, they both went off in different directions.”
Mr Cooper said there were four or five brown cardboard boxes on the back seat of their damaged car and the pair were ‘tampering with them – ripping labels off.’ Asked by the prosecutor what happened when the men ‘split,’ Mr Cooper said ‘the one with the sliders’ went up Wellington Road and the other went south along Wellington Road behind the library.
Asked why he thought he had been abused, Mr Cooper said: “Just because I was on the phone reporting it.”
Under cross-examination by Stephen Kamlish QC, defending Hashem Abedi, Mr Cooper said he could not recall whether the man had tried to remove the bumper. The witness said he remembered the bumper ripped off and the males were trying to drive away.
The QC suggested the boxes were in the rear of the car and not on the back seat and Mr Cooper said he thought they were ‘just in the back.’
“I noticed them doing something to the boxes,” he said.
Police arrived at the scene of the crash and the Aygo was later removed to be scrapped, the jurors were told.
Hashem Abedi, 22, from Fallowfield, is standing trial at the Old Bailey in London where he denies 22 counts of murder, one charge of attempted murder concerning those who were hurt but survived and a charge that he conspired with Salman Abedi to cause an explosion.
● Proceeding