MI5 officer defends decision not to probe bomber before Manchester attack

A senior MI5 officer said it was "reasonable" to decide not to investigate Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi based on the intelligence on him before the attack.

The officer, identified only as witness J, was screened from the public gallery where families of the victims sat watching, some shaking their heads as they listened to his evidence to the inquiry.

It was suggested to him that someone in MI5 should have "joined the dots" as intelligence about the Manchester-born suicide bomber came in over a six-year period prior to the attack.

The inquiry was told that, from December 2013 to January 2017, Abedi was identified as being in direct contact with three men, all separate "subjects of interest" - one suspected of planning travel to Syria, one with links to al-Qaida and the third with links to extremists in Libya.

And between April 2016 and April 2017, a month before the attack, he was identified as a second-level contact with three more subjects of interest, all with suspected links to the Islamic State terror group.

Paul Greaney QC, counsel to the inquiry, asked the witness: "The more a person of an extremist mindset I'm in contact with, the greater the concern I might share their mindset?"

Witness J said: "It doesn't necessarily follow that having contact with a subject of interest is a cumulative risk.

"We have to make very fine judgments about whether someone meets the threshold of investigation; it can't be just on contact, it has to be more than that.

"A second-level contact is a contact of a contact. A second-level contact is just that, and I'm not sure that, to me, that indicates a cumulative risk developing."

Intelligence on Abedi came in right up to the months before he blew himself up with a home-made bomb packed with shrapnel, murdering 22 innocent bystanders and injuring hundreds of other people in the foyer of Manchester Arena at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on May 22 2017.

On one occasion Abedi had himself been made a "subject of interest" but his file was closed five months later, in July 2014, based on a "lack of engagement" with extremists.

Witness J was asked about two prison visits by Abedi to convicted terrorist Abdalraouf Abdallah, the second of which was in January 2017, shortly before he began planning his terror attack.

Mr Greaney asked him if this information, along with the other intelligence, should have led to Abedi being designated a "subject of interest" and an investigation opened.

Witness J said there was no intelligence that the visit was related to attack planning.

He added: "There was no intelligence to indicate that the contact was related to Salman Abedi posing a threat to national security. The decision to not open (an investigation) was a reasonable one."

Twice in the months prior to the attack intelligence was received by MI5 about Abedi but was assessed at the time to relate to possibly non-nefarious or non-terrorist criminality.

In retrospect this intelligence was highly relevant to the planned attack, but the significance of it was not fully appreciated at the time, the inquiry heard.

Abedi's name also hit a "priority indicator" during a separate "data-washing exercise" as falling within a small number of former subjects of interest who merited further consideration.

A meeting to consider the results was scheduled for May 31 2017, nine days after the bombing.

The inquiry also heard that, in 2010, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre of MI5 had identified Manchester as having a problem with "high-level discontent" among some Muslim communities, a crime rate double the national average, a youth gang culture, and a risk of radicalisation and extremism.

Witness J will be questioned by lawyers for the families of the victims later on Monday and on Tuesday.

The hearing continues.