Father of youngest Manchester Arena Bombing victim to sue M15 for failures

It follows the third and final report into the attack in 2017

Author: Jodie SmithPublished 5th Mar 2023
Last updated 5th Mar 2023

The father of the youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing has said he intends to sue MI5 as it has "most of the blame" for the attack.

The security service's director general, Ken McCallum, issued a public apology after the public inquiry into the May 2017 atrocity found it might have been prevented if MI5 had acted on intelligence received in the months before.

Andrew Roussos, the father of Saffie Roussos, who aged eight was the youngest of the 22 people killed in the attack by suicide bomber Salman Abedi which also injured hundreds, said he has instructed solicitors to look into suing the security service.

The Sunday Times reported that he said a number of other families had indicated they might join him in the legal action.

Mr Roussos' solicitors, Broudie Jackson Canter, are looking at a possible High Court claim which would rest upon Article 2 of the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to life.

In his 207-page report, inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders highlighted that if intelligence had been followed up immediately it could have led to Abedi, 22, being followed to the parked Nissan Micra where he stored the explosive, and which he later moved to a rented city centre flat to assemble.

The chairman added that Abedi also could have been stopped at Manchester Airport on his return from Libya four days before the attack.

Sir John's report on the circumstances surrounding the bombing at the end of an Ariana Grande concert also focused on the radicalisation of Manchester-born Abedi, of Libyan descent.

Evidence into the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the atrocity was heard in the city between September 7 2020 and February 15 2022.

Two previous reports into the terror attack were issued by Sir John.

The first was in June 2021 and highlighted a string of "missed opportunities" at the arena venue to identify Abedi as a threat before he walked across the City Room foyer and detonated his shrapnel-laden device.