Arena bomber linked to six MI5 'subjects of interest'

Salman Abedi, the Manchester Arena suicide bomber, was identified associating with six separate MI5 ‘subjects of interest’.

It has been reported that on one occasion, Abedi had himself been made a ‘subject of interest’, but his file was closed five months later in July 2014.

The ongoing public inquiry into the bombing has heard that, alongside his association’s, Abedi also visited a terrorist twice in jails and regularly travelled to war-torn Libya. The inquiry, scheduled to last into next spring, is looking at events before, during and after the attack – including the radicalisation of Abedi and what the security services knew about him.

Intelligence on Salman Abedi came in to MI5 for six years and right up to the months before the attack, which killed 22 people and injuring hundreds more in the foyer of the arena at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May 2017.