Abedi faces being ‘forced’ to attend court

MANCHESTER Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi refused to leave his jail cell to attend court to face a charge of attacking a prison guard.

Following the no-show a judge told Abedi, and his co-accused, Parsons Green Tube bomber Ahmed Hassan, they may be ‘forced’ to attend court.

Abedi, 23, and Hassan, 21, are accused alongside another suspect, Muhammed Saeed, 23, of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on Paul Edwards at HMP Belmarsh on May 11 last year. But neither Abedi nor Hassan appeared via video link from the category A HMP Frankland in County Durham for the hearing at Westminster magistrates court yesterday.

Asked by District Judge Tan Ikram whether Abedi and Hassan were ‘refusing to attend’ the hearing, an unnamed Frankland prison officer replied: “They’re refusing to come down to this location, they are in their cells on the wings.”

The district judge relisted the hearing for today for pleas to be heard, unless the matter gets moved straight to the crown court at a later date, at the request of the prosecution.