Bomber Who Murdered 22 at London Concert Was Saved by Country 3 Years Prior
The British people were aghast, and the rest of the civilized world were horrified, when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated himself at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, U.K., on May 22, 2017, slaughtering 22 people — including young children — and injuring at least 200 more.
Incredibly, it now appears that the British government may have unwittingly played a role in allowing that radical Islamic terrorist attack to transpire, as it has been revealed that the U.K. rescued the future bomber from Libya in August 2014 and transported him to England.
According to The U.K. Guardian, the Manchester Arena suicide bomber — Salman Abedi — was a British citizen of Libyan descent who was rescued along with his brother and about 100 other British citizens when the nation of Libya descended into a brutal civil war in 2014.
At that time, the British Royal Navy sent the HMS Enterprise to Tripoli to pick up and evacuate the stranded British citizens and transport them to the island nation of Malta, from where they caught a flight back to the British Isles.
“During the deteriorating security situation in Libya in 2014, Border Force officials were deployed to assist with the evacuation of British nationals and their dependants,” explained a spokesperson for the British government.
It is unclear exactly how “radicalized” Abedi was at that time, but it was noted that he had been monitored by security services when he initially traveled to Libya, only to have his case as a “subject of interest” closed just one month prior to being rescued by the British Navy.
Perhaps that case should have remained open, or Abedi left in Libya, as just three years later he acted murderously upon his radical Islamic extremist views and attacked the crowded concert of innocent civilians.
“For this man to commit such an atrocity on U.K. soil after we rescued him from Libya was an act of utter betrayal,” said an unnamed government source to the U.K. Daily Mail.
Interestingly, Abedi’s younger brother Hashem — who was also rescued by the British Navy — appears to have returned to Libya at some point since that rescue effort and been imprisoned by a Libyan militia group.
The British government has requested the brother be extradited to the U.K. for questioning and potential prosecution for his role in the bombing attack, but that request has been denied and he remains in a Libyan prison.
A BBC report just weeks after the bombing noted that Abedi had been born in Manchester after his parents fled Libya to the U.K. during the reign of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Friends and relatives had seen signs of his increasing religious extremism as he grew older — he had even been reported to an anti-terrorism hotline while attending Manchester College — but nothing was done by authorities.
His parents eventually moved back to Libya at some unknown point, apparently so the father could fight against Qaddafi’s regime, and the young brothers joined them in early 2014. It is believed that the father is imprisoned along with the younger brother.
A more recent report from the BBC wondered if British intelligence — MI5, to be specific — had dropped the ball when it came to monitoring Abedi’s radicalism.
Indeed, it appears as though an investigation into Abedi’s contacts with known extremists in Libya was closed just one month prior to the rescue mission that brought him out of Libya and back to the U.K.
Regardless of whether the British government missed an opportunity to deal with a radical Islamic terrorist prior to an attack or this is just a morbid coincidence, there are likely more questions that need to be addressed.
Unfortunately, the answers to those questions will likely do little to ease the pain and frustrations felt by those who lost loved ones to the rescued future suicide bomber that murdered so many innocent people at a Manchester concert in 2017.
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