Manchester Arena suicide bombing

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Family connections

Bomb

A possible switch to initiate the explosion, carried in the bomber’s left hand, was also unusual in a suicide device, in that it appears to have contained a small circuit board soldered inside one end.It is not clear from the law enforcement images if the object was a simple plunger switch, or included a timer or a receiver that could be operated remotely via radio signal – or some combination, or something else. Such redundancy, if the object was the switch, could give the bomber or a cell more than one option for deploying the device, and suggest that the bomb was not as simple in design as many terrorist devices, which often are crude and prone to failure or haphazard effect.
LIFG leaders in Libya include Manchester man and master bomb-maker Abd al-Basset Azzouz. Azzouz had lived in the same street as Ramadan Abedi in 2000 before moving to Libya in 2009...It now appears that Salman Abedi, who returned from one of many trips to Libya just four days before the attack, may have been tutored in bomb-making by Azzouz.
...there was somebody with significant bomb making experience behind Abedi, as there was behind the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France in Paris in November 2015. In security jargon, the fingerprints on the Manchester and Paris devices are the same.’

Witness tells of suspicious women

Greater Manchester Police uncover network

May 24: Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said: We are carrying out extensive searches at premises across Manchester,... I think it's very clear that this is a network that we are investigating and it continues at pace and there's extensive investigations going on and activity taking place across Greater Manchester.

May 25: Video: Police Suspect "Terror Network" In Manchester Bombing - CBS News

May 26: ITV News: Police have "got hold of a large part" of the terror network behind the Manchester bombing, police say - including those thought to be "key players". Channel 4 News - They said some of their arrests – eight since Monday – are significant, as are the materials that have been found in their searches. Guardian report from the following morning.

May 27: Joint Threat Analysis Centre downgrades their threat assesment.

May 28: Mark Rowley: We now have 11 men in custody

May 29: Manchester attack probe nets another arrest, 14 now in custody - ABC News Radio

Counter Terrorist Police change the tone

May 31: [1] Our inquiries show Abedi himself made most of the purchases of the core components and what is becoming apparent is that many of his movements and actions have been carried out alone during the four days from him landing in the country and committing this awful attack,” said Det Ch Supt Russ Jackson, head of the north-west counter-terrorism unit.

June 11: Manchester attack: police to question brother of Salman Abedi - John Halliday, The Guardian

Jackson said the police wanted to interview Hashem Abedi after the militia group holding him in Libya said he had confessed to buying bomb-making parts in Britain and knowing that Abedi was planning an attack. The development came as police released the final two of 20 suspects detained in connection with the Ariana Grande concert bombing that killed 22 people and wounded 200 others.

Salman Abedi

Times reports Abedi "known to security services as an associate of Raphael Hostey". Rapper Hostey was prolific IS recruiter from Moss Side
* FBI 'warned MI5 in January that the Manchester bomber was planning an attack on Britain' - Mark Nicol, Mail Online, May 28, 2024
  • .. Abedi, 22, the British-born son of exiled Libyan dissident, returned to the north African country in 2011 with his father to fight with factions linked to the former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), alongside other anti-Gaddafi forces
  • Salman Abedi is reported to have also had contact with jailed IS recruiter Abdalraouf Abdallah, another British-Libyan from Manchester who suffered paralysing injuries while fighting with the 17 February Martyrs Brigade in Libya.

Abdalraouf Abdallah and Mohammed Abdallah connections

Ramadan Abedi and Hasmhim Abedi and Ismail Abedi (aka Ben Romdhan)

Ismail Abedi, the older brother. Is he The teenage Libyan rebel from Manchester whose family is interviewed at their home in Whalley Range, Manchester in this 2011 Channel 4 News feature? Click for details
According to the former MI5 officer and whistleblower David Shayler...a Libyan military intelligence officer approached MI6 with a plan to overthrow Qadafi. The Libyan, codenamed 'Tunworth', proposed establishing links with the LIFG... A secret MI6 cable dated December 1995 — leaked in 2000 and published on the internet — revealed MI6's knowledge of an attempt to overthrow Qadafi in a coup led by five Libyan colonels scheduled for February 1996. David Shaylor later alleged on internet radio that Ramadan Abedi was 'Tunworth'
What were Salman Abedi's father's links to terror groups?
Ramadan, a former airport security worker, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting group in the 1990s, according to a former Libyan security official. The group had links to Al-Qaeda. Although the LIFG disbanded, he reportedly belongs to the Salafi Jihadi movement, the most extreme sect of Salafism and from which Al-Qaeda and ISIS hail. He had also publicly voiced his support for an extremist group fighting in Syria. He posted photos of soldiers clad in black uniforms from the Al-Nusra Front, which was the official Syrian branch of al Qaeda until it broke up last July, on his Facebook page five years ago.
Ramadan's wife, Samia, a nuclear scientist, is a close friend of the wife of Abu Anas al-Libi, an Al-Qaeda veteran who was snatched off the streets of Tripoli in 2013 by US special forces. Al-Libi faced accusations of involvement in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa. He was on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list and died in U.S. custody in 2015
How much was known about Salman prior to Monday night's attack?
Two people who knew Salman are said to have called the police counter-terrorism hotline five years ago to raise concerns that he thought 'being a suicide bomber was OK'. And a senior US intelligence official has claimed that members of his own family had warned police that he was 'dangerous'.
Why was he allowed to travel freely between Libya and the UK?
UK border checks were branded a 'shambles' after it emerged the suicide bomber had travelled to ISIS strongholds Syria and Libya before being able to come 'straight through' to Britain. Labour's Khalid Mahmood told MailOnline the case of Abedi demonstrated the weakness of Britain's border check system and claimed border staff had been reduced by 50 per cent since 2010.
Abedi’s father Ramadan was a member of Libya’s secret service under Qadafi but fled the regime with his mother in 1991.[9] They went first to Saudi Arabia in 1991 and in 1992 moved to London after applying for asylum.[10] Ramadan Abedi Ramadan was part of the broad network of opponents in the UK who supported Islamist anti-Qadafi aims.[11] After Qadafi was overthrown, the Abedi family moved to Manchester but Ramadan largely settled back in Libya, with the rest of the family coming and going between Tripoli and Manchester.[12]
Mr Weatherby told how Ramadan Abedi’s friends reportedly included Anas al-Libi, a fellow member of the LIFG which was affiliated to al-Qaeda and was said to be behind an attempt to assassinate Libyan president Colonel Gaddafi in the 1990s.
...boarded a flight to Istanbul from Manchester Airport at the end of August and has not returned...he was allowed to leave a day after he missed a flight when he was stopped and questioned by police and told them he was going on a three-week break.

Tunworth?

Cerca 1995: a senior member of the Libyan military intelligence service had walked into the British embassy in Tunis and asked to meet the resident MI6 officer. The Libyan ‘walk-in’ had asked for funds to lead a group of Islamic extremists in an attempted coup, which would involve the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi, the head of the Libyan state. Although the Libyan military intelligence officer led the group, he had said he was not an Islamic extremist himself. The Libyan had a brief MI6 record, which PT16/B thought was enough to confirm that the Libyan did have the access to the régime that he claimed.

Ramadan Abedi was a member of libyan military intelligence who fled Libya in the early nineties. From at least 1994, he was involved in the Islamic Fighting Group. This roughly fits with details reported of "Tunworth". Annie Machon, however, was subsequently informed by an anonymous security source that an Abdullah Radwan, caught after the attack on Gaddafi was "Tunworth". Conceivably she could have been given a false lead, maybe security services could have preferred people to think that Tunworth was dead. An article for Lobster magazine argues that Tunworth could not have been Ramadan Abedi as the redacted name in the MI6 documents is 15 spaces long, too long for Ramadan Abedi. This is not necessarily convincing, as perhaps, 'Ramadan Obaidi' or 'Ramadan al-Abedi' could have been used. Whilst Shaylor's public credibility has been diminished in recent times, e.g. citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We cannot conclude on that basis that his claim that Abedi was Tunworth is therefore false. But given that Abedi's age in 2017 was 51, he would've been around 29 years old in 1995 and had been living in the UK for at least two years. Which makes it seem unlikely that he would have been described as as senior intel officer walking into the British embassy in Tunis. What does appear to be the case is that MI6 did work with a former Libyan intel officer high up in the Islamic Fighting Group, in the 1995-6 assassination plot. Also that Ramadan Abedi had been involved in Libyan intel and subsequently was an active member of LIFG sheltered by the UK authorities.--Diagonal (talk) 12:42, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

LIFG base in Manchester

In 2014, however, the U.S. State Department designated Azzouz as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), describing him as “a key operative capable of training al-Qa’ida recruits in a variety of skills, such as IED construction.”e Two days after Abedi’s suicide bombing, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported that U.K. authorities were investigating whether Azzouz had taught Salman Abedi how to make an explosive device, given that Azzouz had set up training camps in Libya.65 No further information confirms this, and it is unclear whether Salman Abedi himself had been to Derna, Libya (where Azzouz was based66) or ever had personal interactions with Azzouz in Libya. However, a Financial Times report in May 2017 quoted a Libyan student and activist in the 2011 revolution who described that Libyans from Manchester were influential among the foreign fighters, including in Derna.

Abd al-Baset Azzouz

Abu Anas al-Libi

ISIS in Syria

Abdel Hakim Belhaj

Official report on 2017 UK terrorist attacks

MI5 and Police have together thwarted 22 plots in the last four years, 9 of which have been stopped since March 2017. There are currently well over 500 counter terrorism investigations, involving more than 3,000 subjects of interest – along with a growing pool of more than 20,000 individuals who have previously been the subject of terrorism investigations. These investigations cover the full range of terrorist activity, from attack planning to activity that supports or facilitates terrorism – but a significant proportion involve potential attack planning threats. The tempo is more intense than ever.

National security concerns over scheduled inquest

The conclusions which they have reached are emphatic that the information simply cannot be disclosed without jeopardising security.

Public inquiry

In July he received a summons to attend court on 21 October and was informed that any objection needed to be received by mid-August. When no response came, the inquiry's solicitor emailed Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and asked to be notified as soon as possible if they received any information "to suggest that Ismail Abedi may not comply with the notice; for example, by leaving this jurisdiction".
A legal notice - requiring him to attend the inquiry - was also presented to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) But the force did not tell inquiry lawyers of Mr Abedi’s departure from the UK until two days after he had left. As such, the inquiry had no chance to use available legal powers to prevent him from leaving the country.
"Given what is known about them, I do not credit [Salman and Hashem Abedi] with the intelligence or sophistication to have come up with the approach they took between themselves," Saunders wrote in the report.
MI5 has previously said that it assessed that no one other than the Abedi brothers was knowingly involved in the plot.
In evidence to the inquiry, an MI5 agent admitted that two pieces of evidence received by MI5 in the months before the bombing were not shared with counter-terrorism policing because their significance “was not fully appreciated at the time”.

Analysis

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