Manchester Arena Inquiry: Families force MI5 to answer more questions about suicide bomber

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

The security services will be forced to answer more questions about Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi following pressure from families of the victims.

MI5 has previously admitted Abedi had come across its radar 18 times since 2010. The Libyan-heritage Fallowfield-raised Salford University student was made a 'subject of interest' in 2014 - but the file was dropped four months later. READ MORE : It took police years to admit Arena bomb failings - and there are still big questions for GMP The security services also uncovered links to six other people of interest to them and, even a few months before the Arena atrocity, more information came to light which had flagged him up for potential further investigation, although the meeting to discuss his case was scheduled to take place nine days after the bombing.

MI5 has also admitted a 'missed opportunity' to stop Abedi when he landed at Manchester Airport just a few days before he launched his attack Following two weeks of evidence in November held in secret to protect national security, last month the chairman of the inquiry Sir John Saunders published a 15-page 'gist' of the secret session he considered safe to be released to the public.

The document revealed more of the information counter terror police and MI5 had on Abedi, and the pressure that the security services were under, prior to the devastating May 2017 attack, which claimed 22 lives and left a thousand others injured.