Manchester attack in 2017: a report points to the shortcomings of British intelligence
Police officers standing guard at the entrance to the Manchester Arena on the evening of its reopening on Saturday September 9, 2017, four months after the attack.
REUTERS/Phil Noble
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British intelligence is accused of serious shortcomings in its management of the Manchester attack in 2017, killing 22 after the explosion of a bomb at the exit of a concert at Manchester Arena, and claimed by the IS .
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On May 22, 2017, a 22-year-old Briton of Libyan origin, Salman Abedi, detonated a bomb outside the
Manchester Arena
concert hall , after a performance by American pop star Ariana Grande, killing seven children and 15 adults and injuring a hundred.
In a 200-page report, former judge John Saunders looked into the radicalization of the terrorist and the possibility that the attack could have been avoided.
The security services missed "
a serious opportunity to act, which could have led to the avoidance of the attack
", according to the report published on Thursday, March 2.
Former judge John Saunders does not elaborate, for national security reasons, our London correspondent
Emeline Vin
reports .
The acts of Salman Abedi minimized by the intelligence services
In his report, only a part of which has been made public, he points to a whole series of shortcomings before the attack.
According to him, Salman Abedi should have been directed to a de-radicalization program as early as 2015. And the intelligence services failed to understand the importance of certain actions of Salman Abedi, for example, his return from Libya, four days before the attack and whose bomb was already present in his car.
John Saunders also points to poor communication between MI5, intelligence, and British anti-terrorism.
With more exchanges, it would have been easier to spot the threat posed by the attacker, he argues.
“Unacceptable” shortcomings
For Richard Scorer, a lawyer who represents eleven of the families of victims, the conclusions of the new report show that the lack of information "
lost,
at the very least
, a possibility of avoiding the attack
".
He described as “
unacceptable
” the shortcomings underlined.
For former judge John Saunders, at least two of the twenty-two victims could have been saved.
An already damning first report on the authorities' inability to identify Salman Abedi as a threat was published in June 2022. A second report in November 2022 this time scrutinized the management of relief by the authorities during the suicide attack, considering in particular that the Manchester police chief had quickly been "
overwhelmed by the amount of work he had to do
".
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To read also: United Kingdom: life imprisonment for the brother of the author of the Manchester attack
(
And with
AFP)
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