Preacher under suspicion 10 years before arena attack
MI5 suspected a Muslim preacher whom Salman Abedi visited on his deathbed had radicalised followers more than a decade before the Manchester attack, according to reports.
Mansour Al-anezi was being monitored by the authorities even before one of his associates detonated a failed suicide bomb in Exeter in 2008.
On the ninth anniversary of the botched attack, Abedi killed 22 people after setting off a bomb in the foyer of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena.
The public inquiry was told of links between Abedi, 22, and Al-anezi, who had previously been arrested and interviewed over his connection with the Exeter attack. He had regularly led prayers at a Plymouth mosque attended by Muslim convert Nicky Reilly, who tried to blow up a restaurant in the Devon city when he was 22.
Al-anezi was not charged, but the BBC found investigators were warned by MI5 when Al-anezi moved to Plymouth from Manchester, before the attack. He was allegedly being monitored at the mosque where he preached.
The revelations come two days before the Manchester Arena inquiry publishes its report into the radicalisation of Abedi, looking at whether the attack could have been prevented.
Families bereaved by the Manchester attack said they were “disappointed to learn of yet more links to terrorism in Abedi’s background which do not appear to have been investigated”.