MANCHESTER, ENGLAND (ANS - May 27, 2017) --
British authorities are making headway in trying to contain the network
they believe is behind the Manchester attack as it emerged that the
suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, reportedly spoke to his brother in Libya
just 15 minutes before he detonated his explosives, according to CNN.
"We
are following up on the network, rolling it up, trying to contain it.
As you've seen from the number of arrests, we are on the right track to
try to contain it," UK Security Minister Ben Wallace told CNN in
Manchester on Friday. "In the end, you get to the bottom of a network."
CNN
has reported that investigators continue to work around the clock to
track down associates of Abedi, a 22-year-old Briton of Libyan descent,
amid fears he is part of a network plotting further mayhem.
On
Friday, authorities arrested a man from Manchester's Rusholme
neighborhood. Then, two more men were arrested early Saturday, police
said in a statement. The men were taken into custody after officers
carried out a controlled explosion to enter a home in the Cheetham Hill
area of central Manchester.
CNN
said these actions brought the total number of people arrested in the
investigation to 13, with 11 still in custody. Two people have been
released without being charged, Greater Manchester police said.
Media reports say Salman Abedi’s brother, Hashim Ramadan Abu Qassem al-Abedi, was arrested in Libya on Tuesday.
Abedi’s
younger brother -- detained in Libya in the aftermath of the bombing –
is reported to have known of his brother's movements and about the plot,
Ahmed Ben Salem, spokesman for the Special Deterrence Force in Tripoli,
told the private broadcaster, Libya's Channel, on Thursday night.
Ben
Salem said the brothers spoke on the phone just minutes before the
attack at a concert at Manchester Arena, but Hashim told his Libyan
interrogators that he did not know details about where and when the
blast would be.
CNN
reports the Special Deterrence Force in Tripoli, a militia nominally
under the control of Libya's interior ministry, arrested Hashim al-Abedi
a day later on suspicion of links to ISIS otherwise known as Islamic
State (IS). The militia also arrested the brothers' father, Ramadan
al-Abedi.
CNN
said that earlier this week the militia said Hashim had admitted --
under interrogation -- that he and Salman were members of IS. It also
said Hashim was in Manchester during the planning for the attack and
that he had been aware of the plot.
Ben
Salem told Libya's Channel that Salman Abedi entered Libya on April 19
and left on May 17, telling his family that he was going to Saudi Arabia
to perform the Umrah pilgrimage. It was a deception, and only his
brother Hashim knew that Salman actually returned to the UK, according
to Ben Salem.
Asked
if there was any indication Salman Abedi had received training in Libya
or planned an attack inside Libya, Ben Salem said, "I don't think so."
Based on what the bomber's brother has told the militia, "everything was
prepared in Manchester" since the end of 2016, he said.
US
officials told CNN this week that it is likely Salman Abedi received
some IS training by traveling to Syria in the months before the bombing,
according to information gathered in the preliminary investigation.
Monday's attack on concert-goers leaving an Ariana Grande show killed 22 people, many of them children, and injured dozens more.
In
her first comments since the attack, Grande said Friday in a note on
Twitter that she is sorry for the "pain and fear" her fans are feeling.
She said the fans killed Monday will be on her mind and in her heart
forever.
"I
will think of them with everything I do for the rest of my life," said
the singer, who also announced Friday that she will hold a benefit
concert in honor of the victims of the Manchester attack.
What is his family background?
Britain’s
Telegraph newspaper (
www.telegraph.co.uk)
reports Abedi was born and raised in Manchester in 1994, the second
youngest of four children, and grew up in a Muslim household, but
matured into a university dropout with an appetite for bloodshed.
His
parents, mother Samia Tabbal and father Ramadan Abedi, a security
officer, are Libyan-born refugees who fled to the UK to escape Gaddafi.
It is thought they returned in 2011 following Gaddafi’s overthrow.
Abedi
is thought to have an older brother Ismail Abedi, who was born in
Westminster in 1993, a younger brother Hashim Abedi, and a sister
Jomana, whose Facebook profile suggests she is from Tripoli and lives in
Manchester.
A
family friend, who asked not to be named, said the family were known to
the Libyan community in the city and described Abedi as "normal." He
told the Press Association (PA): "He was always friendly, nothing to
suggest (he was violent). He was normal, to be honest."
Abedi is believed to have attended the Manchester Islamic Center, also known as the Didsbury Mosque.
Sheikh Mohammad Saeed said he believed Abedi had displayed a "face of hate" after the imam gave a sermon denouncing terrorism.
Abedi's education
The Telegraph
reported that Abedi went to Burnage Academy for Boys between 2009 and
2011, and then on to Salford University in 2014 where he studied
business management before dropping out, according to a source.
The
Telegraph source said Abedi began his course in 2014 and attended
lectures for two years but then stopped going. He would have graduated
this summer. He did not live in university accommodation, had not been
in any trouble at the university, and was not on any radar for pastoral
or social care.
It
is understood Abedi was not known to have participated in any clubs or
societies during his time in higher education and never met with the
resident imam.
Where did he live?
He
was registered as living at the Abedi family home Elsmore Road, south
Manchester as recently as last year, where plainclothes police raided a
downstairs red-bricked semi-detached property on Tuesday.
The
newspaper said neighbors recalled an abrasive, tall, skinny young man
who was little known in the neighborhood, and often seen in traditional
Islamic clothing. He is thought to have lived at a number of addresses
in the area, including one in Wilbraham Road, where officers arrested a
man on Tuesday.
Abedi previously lived with his parents and a brother.
What have the neighbors said?
Neighbors in Elsmore Road told how Abedi had become increasingly devout and withdrawn.
Lina
Ahmed, 21, said: “They are a Libyan family and they have been acting
strangely. A couple of months ago he [Salman] was chanting the first
kalma [Islamic prayer] really loudly in the street. He was chanting in
Arabic.
“He was saying ‘There is only one God and the prophet Mohammed is his messenger.’”
A
family friend, who described the Abedis as “very religious,” said most
of the family had returned to Libya, leaving only Salman and his older
brother Ismail behind.
“They
have not been there for quite a while. Different people come and go,”
said Alan Kinsey, 52, a car-delivery driver who lives across the street.
Kinsey’s wife, Frances, 48, a care worker, said she believed that the
parents had left before Christmas and just one or two young men had been
living in the property.
Kinsey
said a huge flag, possibly Iraqi or Libyan, had been hanging from their
house. “There was a large Iraqi flag hanging out the window but we
never thought anything of it,” Kinsey added. “We thought it was about
football or a protest at home or something.”
How did he become radicalized?
Abedi has "proven" links with Islamic State, according to France's interior minister as cited by The Telegraph.
Gerard
Collomb told French television that both British and French
intelligence services had information that Abedi had been in Syria.
Collomb said: "All of a sudden he travelled to Libya and then most
likely to Syria, became radicalized and decided to commit this attack."
Abedi
had been a "regular kid," who went out and drank until around a year
ago when he "dropped off the radar," the Times reported the bomber's
former landlord's nephew as saying.
The paper quoted a friend as saying he had returned from a three-week trip to Libya in recent days.
Abedi's trips to Libya are now subject to scrutiny, including links to jihadists.
A
group of Gaddafi dissidents, who were members of the outlawed Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), lived within close proximity to Abedi in
Whalley Range.
Among
them was Abd al-Baset Azzouz, a father-of-four from Manchester, who
left Britain to run a terrorist network in Libya overseen by Ayman
al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda.
Azzouz, 48, an expert bomb-maker, was accused of running an al-Qaeda network in eastern Libya. The Telegraph reported in 2014 that Azzouz had 200 to 300 militants under his control and was an expert in bomb-making.
How was he identified?
It has emerged in US media reports that the bomber was identified by a bank card in his pocket.
According
to NBC News, citing a US intelligence official, members of the bomber's
family warned security officials about him in the past, saying that he
was “dangerous.”
The official told the broadcaster that Abedi likely "had help" making the “big and sophisticated bomb."
Has his family spoken?
Speaking for the first time about his son's death, Abedi's father said: "We don't believe in killing innocents. This is not us."
Speaking from Tripoli, he told AP
this his son was innocent and confirmed that British police had
arrested another of his sons, believed to be a 23-year-old arrested in
south Manchester on Tuesday.
Abedi's sister, Jomana, suggested he carried out the attack for revenge on US air strikes in Syria.
“I think he saw children -- Muslim children -- dying everywhere, and wanted revenge," she told the
Wall Street Journal. "He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and he wanted revenge. Whether he got that is between him and God.”
His
brother Hashim reportedly knew he was planning the attack. "His brother
felt there was something going on there in Manchester and he thought
his brother would do something like bombing or attack. So after that, he
told us, 'Having internet, I see the attack in Manchester and I knew
that's my brother'," a spokesman for Libyan authorities told BBC2's Newsnight.
He
revealed that Abedi's younger brother Hashim had been investigated for
about a month and a half over suspicions that he was linked to IS.
"We
were not quite sure about this, but when we arrested and we asked him,
he told us, 'I have ideology with my brother'. Hashim told us, 'I know
everything about my brother, what he was doing there in Manchester.'"
CNN's
Hala Gorani reported from Manchester and Laura Smith-Spark wrote and
reported from London. CNN's Lonzo Cook, Jomana Karadsheh, Mariano
Castillo, James Gray, Richard Allen Greene, Sarah Chiplin and Barbara
Starr contributed to the original CNN report. Martin Evans, Victoria
Ward, Robert Mendick, (Chief Reporter), Ben Farmer, (Defense
Correspondent), Hayley Dixon and Danny Boyl, contributed to the original
Telegraph report.
Photo
captions: 1) Salman Abedi (Facebook). 2) Hashim al-Abedi (CNN) 3)
Messages left at Manchester vigil. 4) Injured girl being helped to
safety. 5) Scene at the vigil (Peter Wooding). 6) Shock in the face of a
woman after the bomb blast. 7) Michael Ireland.
About
the Writer: Michael Ireland is a volunteer internet journalist serving
as Chief Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service, as well as an
Ordained Minister who has served with ASSIST Ministries and written for
ANS since its beginning in 1989. He has reported for ANS from Jamaica,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel, Jordan, China, and Russia. Please consider
helping Michael cover his expenses in bringing news of the Persecuted
Church, by logging-on to: https://actintl.givingfuel.com/ireland-michael
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