THE JIHADI FAMILY
As soldiers patrol fortress Britain, it emerges: Police received repeated warnings about bomber He’s linked to Paris and Brussels terror cells And his father and brother, arrested in Libya, are IS supporters
TWO close relatives of the Manchester suicide bomber were in custody in Libya last night as the hunt for the network behind the atrocity escalated. Salman abedi’s father Ramadan and younger brother Hashem were held after being arrested by counter-terror police. Hashem was accused of having known about his brother’s murderous plans for more than a
month, while it emerged his father had been a revolutionary fighter who publicly voiced support for an Al Qaeda-linked group in Syria.
A third relative, Abedi’s older brother Ismail, was arrested in Manchester. It is not known what his involvement, if any, was.
Yesterday, attention focused on how the bomber had been allowed to slip through the net, with key warnings about his descent into jihadism apparently overlooked.
Two calls about his conduct were allegedly made to a police anti-terror hotline and his family was said to have repeatedly raised concerns he was ‘dangerous’.
It was also claimed the university drop-out had travelled extensively in the Middle East and received terror training in Syria; and that he returned to the UK from Libya just days before the attack.
As police prepared to make a number of ‘significant’ arrests last night, it emerged that detectives were probing possible links between the Manchester Arena atrocity and the Paris and Brussels terror attacks. Sources said officers are exploring whether the same cell was responsible for all three outrages.
One theory is Abedi may have been part of a larger cell that included Mohamed Abrini, the ‘Man in the Hat’, with connections to the mass murders in Paris and Brussels. Abrini is known to have visited Manchester in 2015.
Detectives believe Abedi, 22, may have just been a ‘mule’ and that the specialist who prepared his sophisticated device is plotting further bloodshed.
Yesterday armed police and the military stormed addresses in Manchester as Britain went into an unprecedented security lockdown, with up to 1,000 troops at some of the country’s most historic sites.
On an extraordinary day: ÷Harrowing police pictures of the terror crime scene were leaked to US media, showing screws and nuts propelled by the blast; ÷This prompted a furious reaction from Downing Street, with Theresa May expected to protest to Donald Trump today; ÷It was reported Abedi may have had links to an IS cell which operated in Manchester, and knew one of its most prolific recruiters Raphael Hostey – thought to have been killed by a drone strike in Syria last year aged 24; ÷Images emerged purporting to show Abedi in Manchester’s Arndale shopping centre with a rucksack three days before the attack; ÷A woman became the sixth person to be arrested as police launched a massive manhunt for the network behind the attack, amid fears the mastermind is still on the loose; ÷The arrest of a man in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, took the total to seven; ÷More heart-breaking stories emerged about those killed on Monday night, including an off-duty policewoman and a woman who shielded her niece; ÷Sources said Mrs May will today call on Nato to join the military campaign against IS terrorists, to show ‘unity’ with Britain; ÷New criminal offences designed to ensnare Islamist hate preachers were being drawn up by ministers;
Grotesque terror manuals were still available through Google, Twitter and Facebook yesterday, despite being warned about them 24 hours earlier; ÷It was announced a minute’s silence will be held today at 11am, while general election campaigning will resume fully tomorrow.
Last night security services faced difficult questions after a Muslim community worker said members of the public called the police anti-terrorism hotline warning about Abedi’s extreme and violent views several years ago.
The unnamed worker told BBC News two people who knew Abedi at college tipped off officers after he made statements ‘supporting terrorism’ and expressing the view that ‘being a suicide bomber was OK’.
The calls are thought to have been made five years ago after Abedi left school, the worker added.
It is also understood that Abedi was in Manchester earlier this year when he told people of the value of dying for a cause and made hardline statements about suicide operations and the conflict in Libya.
Meanwhile, the French interior minister Gerard Collomb yesterday said its authorities had learned from British investigators that Abedi had travelled to Libya and probably Syria in the lead up to the Manchester atrocity.
‘Today we only know what British investigators have told us – that someone of British nationality, of Libyan origin, suddenly, after a trip to Libya and then probably to Syria, becomes radicalised and decides to carry out this attack,’ he said.
Intelligence experts believe Abedi travelled to a conflict zone during a trip to Libya where he was given specialist training that enabled him to carry out the sophisticated attack.
It is understood the security services do not yet know how many countries he visited and are not certain which ones. They were still working to establish his travel pattern.
According to reports in the US, members of the bomber’s family had also warned security officials about him in the past, saying that he was ‘dangerous’. NBC News reported the claims from a ‘US intelligence source’ but they did not give any more details of when the fam- ily’s fears were reported to authorities. Meanwhile, the bomber’s father Ramadan Abedi was arrested yesterday outside his home in a suburb of the Libyan capital Tripoli.
A witness said the 51-year-old, who had earlier insisted his son was innocent of the Manchester bombing, was handcuffed by armed men and whisked away. An official did not explain why he was arrested.
Abedi’s younger brother Hashem, who was also born in Manchester, was detained in Libya on Tuesday night on suspicion of links to IS. Hashem is said to have been in contact with Salman and is suspected of planning to carry out an attack in the Libyan capital, police said.
It was also reported last night that Abedi telephoned his mother – Samia Tabbal, 50, in Tripoli shortly before the massacre, after asking his brother to put them in touch with each other.
‘His brother, before the attack he called him,’ a Libyan police spokesman told BBC Newsnight. ‘So his brother thought something was going on there in Manchester and he thought he will do something like bombing or attack.’
Abedi’s parents are thought to have been granted asylum or leave to remain when they first arrived in the UK.
Last night police confirmed they had raided an address in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, and arrested a man. A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said the searches at the property were connected to Mondays’s attack but they were keeping an ‘open mind’. All seven arrested remain in custody.
‘Father handcuffed by armed men’
hOW many boxes does an Islamist extremist have to tick before he qualifies for close surveillance by the security services?
Nobody needs the wisdom of hindsight to see that salman Abedi posed a grave threat to public safety.
Indeed, he was known to have travelled to Libya and syria, where it now emerges he trained with Islamic state. At home, in a part of Manchester notorious for spawning jihadis, he had attracted attention by chanting Islamic prayers in the street and raging against Western decadence.
he is even said to have been reported to the authorities by his own family. And like many suicide bombers before him, he had a history of smoking cannabis, with its proven links to psychosis and schizophrenia.
This is not to mention his father, a Libyan given refuge in Britain (why?), who is said to have stopped work in Manchester – reportedly as an airport security officer! – to fight alongside Islamic fundamentalists against Colonel Gaddafi.
Yet extraordinarily, the security services didn’t see Abedi as a serious enough threat to place him on their ‘watch list’.
This paper is the first to acknowledge Britain’s debt to MI5 and the police, who have foiled dozens of terror plots. We also accept it’s a tall order to expect them to keep round-the-clock tabs on all 3,000 jihadis in the UK – and counting, as more brainwashed fighters and their families return from the Middle east.
But as the Manchester atrocity underlines horrifically, it takes only one extremist to slip through the net to inflict unimaginable suffering on scores of families.
That a danger as obvious as Abedi was left free to travel, gain access to explosives and execute mass murder in the heart of a British city leaves the authorities with serious questions to answer.
As for how we came to harbour thousands of Islamists dedicated to destroying our way of life, the mass immigration begun in the Blair years clearly has much to do with it (and how profoundly disturbing that, according to German intelligence, six million more migrants are currently massing on the shores of the Mediterranean, hoping to flee to europe).
Coupled with the Leftist doctrine of multiculturalism, the sheer scale of the influx has made integration impossible, creating communities cut off from our values and traditions.
Another powerful factor in encouraging extremism, as this paper has so often warned, has been the West’s reckless intervention in foreign wars.
Though this in no way excuses Abedi, the Manchester victims would almost certainly be alive today if it hadn’t been for David Cameron’s crass bid to impress America by helping to topple Gaddafi.
Thus, he destabilised the entire region, leaving a vacuum to be filled by Islamic state and turning Libya into a haven for global terrorists, arms dealers and people traffickers.
But with the damage to our security done, the priority now is to stop it spreading. Inevitably, this could mean compromising some cherished liberties, with much wider use of tagging and house arrest under terrorist prevention orders with real bite.
It must also mean rigorous border controls and hammering down hard on tax-avoiding, lethally irresponsible social media firms – still spreading guidance for terrorists after Monday’s atrocity.
Nobody will be sadder than the Mail if the balance between civil liberties and citizens’ protection has to be slightly recalibrated. But for too long, the liberal Left has argued that those liberties matter more than anything else.
The relatives of this week’s victims in Manchester will doubtless take a different view. Under the incoming government, this vital debate must begin on day one.