A leading expert on British anti-terrorism law has said counter-terrorism agency MI5 missed "obvious" signs of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber's deadly plot.
22-year-old Salman Abedi killed himself and 22 others when he detonated his explosives in the crowed at an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May 2017. More than a thousand others were injured. Many of the victims were children or teenagers.
Abedi had been allowed to travel to Libya in 2011 to take part in the violent overthrow of the government, backed by the US, Britain, France and former colonial ruler Italy. Other Islamic extremists who took part in the coup were later transplanted to Syria for the CIA-orchestrated regime change attempt there.
Interviewed for a new two-part ITV documentary When Worlds Collide, to be broadcast this week, Lord David Anderson QC said "mistakes were made" and MI5 overlooked “important” information that “linked” Abedi to a bomb plot.
The QC led a review of terrorism legislation, published in 2015, and wrote an assessment of MI5 months after the 2017 attack.
"MI5 interpreted that intelligence as relating to ordinary crime," Anderson said. "With hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that that intelligence related to a developing terrorist plot."
“Now we all make mistakes, we all misunderstand things that we are told, we all jump to conclusions, and I’m afraid that’s what happened in this case,” he added.
Anderson said MI5 should have put procedural "trip wires" in place to trigger renewed surveillance of subjects where appropriate. "That’s the trickiest thing of all in what MI5 do," he said.
Abedi was investigated by MI5 in 2014, but his file was closed. He was later flagged up by the agency's "Operation Clematis" as "somebody who looked as though he might deserve a priority investigation" — but the security service scheduled action nine days too late.
"The tripwire is automatic, it takes you a certain way, but it is not a substitute for human beings meeting in a room to pull together the evidence they have and to discuss the case," Anderson said. "As a consequence of that, the meeting was fixed on May 31. The plot ran faster than the process and on May 22 he detonated his backpack."
7 December 2020, 11:51 GMT
Anderson said MI5 had already accepted that it had dropped the ball when it failed to apprehend Abedi when he flew back to the UK airport from Libya four days before the concert.
“The powers of the police at the airport are very strong indeed. They can compel people to answer questions, there is no right of silence,” He said.
“At the end of the day, mistakes were made. Whether they would have made a difference is another matter,” Anderson continued. “MI5 say it’s not very likely that we could have prevented the attacks anyway. I prefer to emphasise that we simply can’t know.”
Abedi's brother and accomplice Hashem was jailed in 2020 for 22 counts of murder, along with attempted murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.