MANCHESTER ATTACK NEWS UPDATE
MI5 is to hold an inquiry into the way it dealt with warnings from the public that the Manchester suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was a potential threat.
Whitehall officials have acknowledged the security service was examining what assumptions had been made about the 22-year-old before last Monday’s attack.
It later emerged it was alerted to his extremist views at least three times.
Fourteen locations are being searched by police and 13 men remain in custody on suspicion of terror offences.
The latest person to be arrested was a 19-year-old man in the Gorton area of Manchester on Sunday. A 25-year-old man was held earlier in the Old Trafford area of the city.
MI5 has launched a “post incident investigation” into how the Manchester bomber was overlooked, while a separate report is being prepared for ministers and those who oversee the work of the service.
A Whitehall official said previously that Abedi was one of a “pool” of former subjects of interest whose risk remained “subject to review” by the security service and its partners.
Born in Manchester to Libyan parents. BBC Newsnight reported that when Abedi was 16 he fought against the Colonel Gaddafi regime with his father during the school holidays.
It was while at Manchester College that two people who knew Abedi have confirmed they made separate calls to an anti-terrorism hotline to warn the police about his extremist views.
