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MI5 downgraded intelligence on Manchester Arena bomber

The inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing has heard how MI5 downgraded what turned out to be ‘highly relevant’ evidence about the suicide bomber Salman Abedi.

Witness J, a senior MI5 officer, anonymously told the inquiry that there were two pieces of intelligence received by the intelligence agency about Abedi in the months before the attack that were assessed at the time to relate to possibly non-nefarious or non-terrorist criminality. Only after the attack did MI5 realise that the evidence was important.

The inquiry heard that MI5 first received information about Abedi on 30 December 2010, the day before his 16th birthday, but there was ‘nothing to suggest’ then that he was a risk to national security. From December 2013 to January 2017, he was in direct contact with three men, all separate ‘subjects of interest’, whilst between April 2016 and April 2017, a month before the attack, he had contact with three more subjects of interest, all with suspected links to the ISIS terror group.

On one occasion Abedi had himself been made a subject of interest, but his file was closed five months later, in July 2014, based on a ‘lack of engagement’ with extremists.

The investigation into the attack continues.

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