Manchester Arena Bombing

A Police officer stands guard near the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017 in Manchester, England

On May 17th, 2017 a Libyan man named Salman Abedi is said to have committed a suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena, killing 22 and wounding 1,017, but as it goes, there is much more to this case than meets the eye. So let's peel this back layer by layer.

The first detail of note is that a concert goer named Dawn Waddy, who attended the concert with her daughter and a friend, said that the concert was severely lacking in security and that they never checked the bags of attendees, her statement reads as follows:

"Dawn Waddy was at the Manchester Arena with her daughter Holly and a friend when the explosion took place and said there should have been more security staff in the arena.

She said: 'We walked through the doors when we had our tickets and they scan your tickets and we wasn't even checked.'

'They never checked bags at all, I never saw them check anybody's bags.'"

This statement was also backed up by a Czech woman named Nikola Trochtova who appeared on Czech public radio after the bombing, her statement reads as follows:

"A Czech woman who was also at the concert in Manchester said there was only a cursory search of bags as people entered the arena.

Nikola Trochtova told Czech public radio: 'There was almost no security check, rather zero. They let us get in without any check if we have anything with us.'

'The only thing they were interested in was if we had any bottles of water with us. They almost didn't check our bags, they didn't take a look.'"

The given reason as to why the bomber was able to commit his actions is that he targeted attendees as they were leaving the concert itself, hence his bag wasn't checked, but even to enter the arena he would've had to go through a security checkpoint to begin with, additionally Showsec expected an egress and a supervisor was present in the City Room they didn't go to the mezzanine, which they were supposed to.

Combine these above details with the fact that a man named Christopher Wild had reported Abedi to the BTP over his suspicious behavior, to which they said they were aware of his presence there but decided not to act on it, simply letting him lurk in the arena with a large bag for over an hour. Wild was not the first to bring attention to the presence of Abedi either.

At best this shows complete incompetence on behalf of Showsec and the BTP, at worst it shows that they were told to ignore the presence of Abedi. Either of these is not a good thing however.

Now let's look into the background of the bomber himself, Salman Abedi, because this is where it gets interesting.

Two photos of Salman Abedi, the accused bomber

It's said that Salman Abedi went to Libya in 2011 alongside his father to join the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and fight the current government in order to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, after his government fell they both returned home to the UK.

Supposedly the LIFG was condemned by the UK for it's links to Jihadism, but on that same note it's documented that the UK had an 'open door' policy, allowing British born Libyans to go to Libya to fight against Gaddafi with 'no questions asked'.

Additionally it's also known that the MI6 directly funded the LIFG, ignoring their links to Al-Qaeda entirely. An excerpt from an Al Jazeera article on the subject:

"When the so-called 'war on terror' began, however, the LIFG was swiftly proscribed. The fact that they denied any formal alliance with Osama bin Laden was irrelevant to British authorities. In 2004 MI6 arranged for an exiled LIFG leader, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, to be transferred into Gaddafi's torture dungeons, with Mark Allen, the head of MI6's counterterrorism unit, saying, 'This was the least [the UK] could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built in recent years'.

In 2011, however, following the Arab Spring, the LIFG was suddenly back inside the British tent.

Before the Arab Spring, some Libyan exiles in Manchester, the city that hosts the UK's largest Libyan community, were believed to be linked to the LIFG. Due to the group's proscribed status and alleged links to al-Qaeda, these exiles' movements were severely restricted by the UK authorities, including passport confiscations.

But the situation was reversed once Libyan regime change was in motion. Passports were returned. Intelligence officers are even said to have 'sorted' exit for these exiles, so long as they were prepared to fight, produce propaganda or otherwise assist in removing Gaddafi.

As a result, numerous Libyan exiles in Britain and Brits of Libyan extraction went abroad - many who were brave and had good intentions. Among these is said to have been Salman Abedi, who was only sixteen at the time, and his father, who was a member of the LIFG and had sought refuge in Britain in the nineties.

Some Libyans say Salman Abedi would not have been allowed to join the fighting because of his age, but because the British government appear to have allowed such a young and impressionable man to travel to Libya with his father, who had been a prominent member of the LIFG, obvious questions have to be asked about the wisdom of this policy."

Naturally because of this the UK also allowed those who were deemed a terror threat in the UK to be flown to Libya as well, where they learned combat tactics, how to make explosives and so forth, it was claimed that the MI6 had numerous chances to stop Abedi gaining this knowledge, despite him and his family being known as having ties to Jihadist groups and considered a potential terror threat he was allowed to do as he pleased however.

Eventually it was officially revealed in 2023 that Abedi was indeed on the radar of the MI5 over 20 times for his links to ISIS and attempts to travel to Syria, a timeline of MI5's knowledge of Abedi is presented below:

December 2010: Salman Abedi first came to MI5's attention seven years before the attack, when an address linked to him was relevant in one of its investigations.

2011: The following year, MI5 and counter-terrorism police made checks after information was received that Abedi may be travelling to Syria. It was determined he had gone to Europe briefly.

November 3rd and 17th 2011: Ramadan Abedi, Salman's father, was subject to a Schedule 7 ports examination at Manchester Airport and Dover, returning from Libya. On one occasion Salman was with him.

December 2013: MI5's Operation Camellia investigated a man suspected of planning to go to Syria to join the fighting. It looked at whether Abedi matched the profile of an individual seen acting suspiciously alongside their subject of interest, but he was ruled out.

March 18th, 2014: MI5 made Abedi a subject of interest in his own right, opening an investigation because a telephone number registered to him had been in contact with Operation Camellia's subject of interest. He was treated as a "Tier Three" contact - someone who was not involved in the main activity - and his case was closed four months later.

July 8th, 2014: Salman and his younger brother, Hashem Abedi, travelled to Libya. On 4 August, the Royal Navy's HMS Enterprise evacuated 110 Britons from the war in Tripoli. Among them was Abedi, then 19, and Hashem, then 17. Neither the Ministry of Defence nor the police conducted a debriefing with them.

August 1st, 2014: IS recruiter Abdalraouf Abdallah's home was searched and his phones seized as part of Operation Oliban, revealing 1,300 texts with a person called "Salman", including some in praise of martyrdom.

2015: Abedi appeared again in an MI5 investigation in 2015. His phone number was in contact with "Subject of Interest B", an individual previously linked to al Qaeda and under investigation at the time for facilitating travel to Syria. The same number was already in MI5's file because the alleged extremist in Operation Camellia had saved it on his phone as "Salman in Manchester". MI5 knew at this point that Abedi and Subject of Interest B had met in person a number of times. Also in 2015, MI5 received information that Abedi was in contact with a "longstanding" subject of interest, described as "Subject of Interest C", who had previous affiliations with a group in Libya.

February 2015: Abedi visited IS recruiter Abdallah when he was on remand in Belmarsh prison in London. MI5 and the North West Counter Terrorism Unit sought information on the nature of the visit but did not get any intelligence which they felt justified looking into Abedi as a formal subject of interest.

May 6th, 2015: A letter to counter-terrorism police by an MI5 officer indicated an investigative team were considering opening a "lead" investigation into Abedi and another individual. No such investigation was opened but for more than a year between June 2015 and August 2016, as part of another lead investigation, intelligence was received on Abedi. He was "effectively being treated as a Tier 2" subject of interest - one involved in funding or travel abroad - although not "formally" being a subject of interest. On several occasions, Abedi was "mentioned in reporting" to MI5, which included "conflicting information" about his support for IS.

September 3rd, 2015: Salman's older brother, Ismail Abedi, was subject to a Schedule 7 ports examination at Heathrow as he returned from his honeymoon in Malaysia. Radical material was found on his phone.

September 16th, 2015: Salman Abedi and Hashem Abedi travelled to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrimage, returning on 3 October. Friends later say this was a turning point for Hashem, who was to become his brother's bomb-maker.

October 2015: Abedi was reopened and closed as a subject of interest on the same day. He was thought to have had direct links to a "senior" Islamic State figure in Libya, but the case was closed when it was clarified their links were through a third person.

November 7th, 2015: Salman Abedi travelled to Germany via Paris. He returned to Britain the following day. Initially, an MI5 officer considered it was likely he was attempting to travel to Syria but an MI5 investigator - in conjunction with colleagues - disagreed and concluded travel to Syria was unlikely. Separately, the Paris attacks took place six days later.

April 2016: Abedi appeared as a "second level" contact, meaning the contact of a contact, for an MI5 subject of interest who was under investigation for providing financial support to a member of IS in Syria.

May 2016: A month later, MI5 made checks after Manchester Airport informed police that Abedi was seen activating a boarding card next to a suspicious individual, thought to be the IS recruiter Abdallah. It turned out not to be Abdallah and while the pair travelled to Istanbul, a well-known transit point to Syria, they were actually on their way to Libya.

Early 2017: On two occasions, intelligence was received by MI5 about Abedi that was assessed to relate to "possibly innocent activity or to non-terrorist criminality on his part". Its nature has never been publicly disclosed due to national security, but the inquiry found that had the intelligence been interpreted differently, Abedi may have been thwarted. Neither piece of intelligence was shared by MI5 with counter-terror police in the North West.

January 2017: Abedi, aged 22, again appeared as a second-level contact of an individual who was being investigated because he had previously travelled to Syria and was linked to IS.

January 18th, 2017: Abedi visited Abdallah in prison again, this time at HMP Altcourse, accompanied by two associates. The three men were together in the visitors' hall for an hour and 47 minutes. The date was significant because it was the day Abedi ordered his first bomb-making chemicals. MI5 was informed of the visit.

March 3rd, 2017: Abedi was flagged as a potential terrorist by a computer programme, as a result of intelligence received in mid-2016. He was one of 685 subjects of interest to hit a "priority indicator" for his case to be reopened. On 1 May, three weeks before the attack, MI5 triaged Abedi's case and decided it met the criteria for further investigation.

April 2017: Abedi was again flagged up as a second-level contact of a subject under investigation for links to a recruiter and facilitator for IS in Libya.

May 8th, 2017: Abedi was one of 26 people referred to another security service operation, looking at whether people had re-engaged with extremism. A meeting to discuss the case was due to be held on 31 May, nine days after the attack.

With the above examples, it's rather hard to believe that Abedi simply slipped through the cracks and went unnoticed by the MI5/MI6, especially that the UK isn't unaware of Jihadist terrorism in their country it begs an even greater question of how Abedi was able to plan and commit the attack to begin with knowing that so much documentation existed on him and his family.

Some have suggested that either the attack was known of in advance by the MI5/MI6 and they simply allowed it to happen, or that it was planned entirely by them, both are possible considering that the UK allowed him and his family to roam freely since they fought in Libya, where they also allowed terrorist attacks to go forward.

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