Police Name Salman Abedi As Manchester Attacker
Police have named 22-year-old Salman Ramadan Abedi as the person suspected of carrying out the suicide attack at Manchester Arena on Monday evening.
Abedi was born in Manchester on New Year’s Eve 1994 to Libyan parents, who had fled that country after becoming opponents of Colonel Gaddafi’s repressive regime.
Having spent a few years in London, the family moved to Manchester where his father used to do the call to prayer at a mosque in Didsbury.
Abedi went to school in Manchester and on to Salford University before dropping out, and worked in a bakery. Friends remember him as a good footballer, a keen supporter of Manchester United and a user of cannabis.
He had a sister and two brothers.
His mother and father are now believed to be back living in Libya, and for a while he left the UK too but he is believed to have returned in the last few days.
Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said Abedi had not been formally named by the coroner.
Abedi’s family lived at more than one address in the city, including a property at Elsmore Road in the Fallowfield area that was raided by police.
Officers also carried out a search of a property in Whalley Range.
A 23-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the investigation.
Manchester is home to one of the largest Libyan communities in the UK and neighbours have talked about the family having a Libyan flag flying in its house at certain times of the year.
BBC home editor Mark Easton said the raided area was known to have been home to a number of Islamist extremists in recent years; some with links to Syria and Libya; some alive and some dead.
A trustee of the Manchester Islamic Centre, also known as the Didsbury Mosque, told the Press Association it was likely Abedi had attended there.
Fawaz Haffar said Abedi’s father had used to perform the call for prayer at the mosque, and one of his brothers had been a volunteer there.
Mr Haffar described the mosque as moderate, modern and liberal, and said he was a member of an organisation liaising with police, the Independent Advisory Group.
Mohammed Saeed El-Saeiti, the imam at the Didsbury Mosque, remembers Abedi as an dangerous extremist, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reports.
“Salman showed me the face of hate after my speech on Isis [an acronym for the Islamic State group],” said the imam. “He used to show me the face of hate and I could tell this person does not like me. It’s not a surprise to me.”
Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said the priority for detectives was to establish whether Abedi had acted alone or had worked as part of a wider network.
The Islamic State group issued a statement after the attack claiming it had been carried out by one of its members.