How family and Libya conflict radicalised Manchester Arena bomber

Although Salman Abedi was born in Manchester, on New Year’s Eve in 1994, his path to becoming one of the UK’s most deadly terrorists began in Libya, the country of his parents’ birth.

It was from there that Ramadan Abedi and Samia Tabbal fled in 1993, claiming asylum in the UK on the basis that they faced persecution under the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The couple went on to establish new lives in Fallowfield, south Manchester, with their children attending local schools.

But the conflict back in Libya loomed large in the Abedi household, with the family shuttling between Manchester and Tripoli. Ramadan was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Islamist organisation opposed to Gaddafi, the Manchester Arena inquiry heard.

Sir John Saunders, the inquiry chair, believes the family holds “significant responsibility” for the radicalisation of Salman and his younger brother Hashem, now serving a life sentence for his role in planning the attack. Salman and Hashem’s ideology was influenced by the extremist views of their parents and older brother Ismail, Saunders found.

In September 2011, a month before Gaddafi was killed by rebel fighters, the Abedi family moved back to Libya. Police evidence suggests Salman and Hashem – then aged 16 and 14 – fought as part of the civil war.

The inquiry saw photographs of the brothers carrying weapons and wearing military uniforms with the sons of Abu Anas al‐Libi, an al-Qaida commander linked to the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. It would have been a “a formative experience” for the teenagers, wrote Saunders.

Salman Abedi seen on CCTV on 18 May 2017 after arriving back in Manchester from Libya. Photograph: GMP/PA

By then, Salman was already on the radar of north-west counter-terrorism police. On 30 December 2010, the day before his 16th birthday, officers told MI5 he was linked to an address that was relevant to a “trace” request and had been stopped – and – searched twice, but nothing suspicious was found. A “trace” is a check of Security Service databases to establish whether they hold “adverse information” on an individual.

By September 2012, the eldest three boys returned from Libya without their parents, with Salman enrolling at Manchester College. Within a month he had assaulted a female pupil by hitting her on the back of the head, and it was Ismail who attended meetings about his brother’s behaviour.

The college was sufficiently concerned about the absent parents to ask the police to carry out a welfare check, but not to refer him to Channel or Prevent, the anti-extremist programmes.

The act of violence was viewed not as evidence of extreme religious ideology but of a bad temper. Saunders accepted that was a reasonable assumption, but wrote: “For the future, in my view, misogynistic violence should be recognised as a potential indicator of radicalisation.”

In 2013, Salman enrolled at Trafford College in Greater Manchester. A staff member told the inquiry she had seen a photo on his mobile phone that showed him holding a gun. She took no action after the teenager said his family had lots of land in Tripoli and he had gone shooting there.

“This image was another potential indicator of extremism that, if looked at cumulatively with the other indicators I have identified, should have justified a referral to Prevent,” ruled Saunders.

Libya had a “detrimental” effect on Salman, wrote Saunders. A cousin told the inquiry that on his return he was “going out partying, drinking, smoking weed”, and had developed what appeared to be an addiction to tramadol, a strong painkiller.

In March 2014, when Salman was 19, he was made a “subject of interest” by MI5 –someone suspected of being a threat to national security – because of his association with someone known by the public inquiry as “subject A”.

Three months later, on 29 June 2014, Islamic State declared a caliphate. Within a fortnight, Salman and Hashem were back in Libya, where the civil war had reignited. They had to be evacuated by the Royal Navy because extremist militias were fighting in the area.

Back in the UK, Salman’s file was closed as a “subject of interest” on 21 July 2014. It was a reasonable decision because of his lack of engagement with individuals of interest, ruled Saunders.

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Hashem Abedi is serving a life sentence for his role in planning the attack. Photograph: Force for Deterrence in Libya/PA

But the judge believes the security services should have paid closer attention to Salman’s friendship with a young Mancunian-Libyan called Abdalraouf Abdallah, who was seriously injured while fighting in Libya. “He returned to Manchester with a hero status among impressionable young men from a Muslim background who were susceptible to Islamic State propaganda,” wrote Saunders.

Abdallah told the inquiry Salman had been his friend since they were both “babies”. The pair exchanged more than 1,000 messages in November 2014 when Abdallah was under surveillance by MI5. He was arrested soon after and Salman visited him in jail when he was on remand. After he was convicted of terrorism offences and jailed in May 2016, the pair communicated on an illegal phone, and Salman made a further prison visit in January 2017.

Another “likely” influence on Salman, believes Saunders, was Raphael Hostey, who travelled to Syria to join IS and was killed in a drone strike. Before his death, Hostey became a prominent propagandist for that group, recruiting people from around the world and particularly from his own south Manchester community.

It was in Libya, a few weeks before the attack, where Saunders believes Salman probably received instructions in how to assemble the bomb that ultimately killed 22 innocent people at an Ariana Grande concert.

Investigators believe Salman and Hashem watched an IS video posted online in 2016, in which a balaclava-clad instructor explained how to make an explosive called triacetone triperoxide. This cannot be definitively proven: data from just two of the 14 electronic devices the brothers were known to have used was ever recovered.

But Saunders thinks the brothers were not clever enough to make such a sophisticated bomb by themselves, without having practised beforehand. Neither held qualifications in “chemistry, maths or any other academic discipline that might be relevant”, wrote the judge in volume three of the Manchester Arena inquiry report.

Salman had an “undistinguished educational career”, said Saunders, noting that the bomber displayed “problematic” behaviour at school and college – particularly while attending Burnage academy in south Manchester, where he was involved in 15 incidents of “extreme rudeness to staff, fighting, swearing, theft and hooliganism”.

“In my view, it is likely that, while in Libya during the period 15 April 2017 to 18 May 2017, [Salman Abedi] received practical instruction on how to assemble an IED [improvised explosive device],” ruled Saunders.

Tributes to the victims to the Manchester Arena attack in St Ann’s Square in May 2017. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

The judge also thought it “more than likely” that when Salman returned to Manchester on 18 May 2017 to carry out his suicide attack he was carrying with him a special Sistema 45910 switch used to detonate the bomb. Saunders believes someone in Libya told Salman how to make his bomb even more deadly, as the 22-year-old replaced some of the ingredients in the final few days before the attack.

Should security services have done more to monitor those travelling to and from Libya? Saunders thought so, finding that the intelligence agencies were more focused on preventing people from going to Syria at the time of the attack.

“The threshold that the Security Service applied when deciding whether to investigate any returnee from Libya was, in my view, too high and amountedto a risky position,” wrote Saunders.

This was particularly true in south Manchester, which the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre singled out in 2010 as being a place where young members of the Libyan community were in danger of radicalisation.

/Ultimately, we will never definitively know why Salman carried out the attack. He blew himself up leaving no note or propaganda video. But Saunders reaches some sort of conclusion as to what drove his hateful act, blaming the “noxious” absences of his parents, and the “malign presences’” of radicalising peers.

Presenting the report on Thursday, he apologised to the bereaved families for not being able to answer all of their questions. “I did ask the questions; I did get answers,” he said, but for reasons of national security “I have not been able to report publicly what those answers were.”