Back in May, the world was rocked by a tragic terror attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, and today, an official report is saying the incident could have been avoided.
According to a report by lawyer and former reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation David Anderson, Salaman Abedi, the suicide bomber who murdered 22 people, had been “a subject of interest” for the British security service MI5.
Anderson’s report addresses four separate terror attacks that killed 36 people in Manchester and London in 2017. He asserts three of the six terrorists involved in those events had been known to security services. He also contends the Manchester attack could have been avoided had “the cards fallen differently.”
Apparently, Abedi had been investigated by the MI5 between January and July of 2014, and again in October of 2015. As the Daily Sabah reports, those “inquiries were downgraded and the significance of intelligence received about the 22-year-old before the Manchester bombing was not treated as a priority.” So, when Abedi returned to the U.K. from Libya four days before the attack, he wasn’t questioned by British authorities.
Anderson says that counter-terrorism officers made justifiable decisions, even if they were regrettable in hindsight. He also notes that 22 terrorist plots have been successfully foiled over the past four years, including nine in the past year alone.
So what now? In his report, Anderson says “MI5 and the police have identified the need to use data more effectively, to share knowledge more widely, to improve their own collaboration and to assess and investigate terrorist threats on a uniform basis, whatever the ideology that inspires them."
