Police on two continents have made arrests connected to the suicide bombing in Manchester carried out by Salman Abedi that killed 22.
Among those arrested in Tripoli were two of Abedi’s brothers and his father. The Libyan government says they have ties to both ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Fox News:
Hashim Abedi, who was born in 1997, was arrested in Tripoli on Wednesday evening by the Libyan counter-terrorism force Rada on suspicion of links to the Islamic State, and was planning a new attack on the Libyan capital, a government spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday.
The father of the bomber was arrested in Tripoli on Wednesday, a Libyan security spokesman told The Associated Press. The father, Ramadan Abedi, had said another brother of the bomber, Ismail, was arrested Tuesday.
What’s more, two U.S. defense officials confirmed to Fox News that Salman Abedi spent three weeks in Libya prior to the Manchester bombing, returning to England just days before the Ariana Grande concert Monday, when he launched his attack at the concert venue.
Is anyone going to mention that Libya is a failed state and thus a safe place for terrorists to plan their attacks largely due to the incompetence and stupidity of the Obama administration — specifically Hillary Clinton’s failure?
Ramadan Abedi escaped Tripoli in 1993 after Qaddafi’s security authorities issued an arrest warrant and eventually sought political asylum in Britain. The elder Abedi first immigrated to London before settling in the Whalley Range area of south Manchester, where they had lived for at least a decade.
The neighborhood is known to be home to a number of former LIFG members living in exile, including Abd al-Baset Azzouz – an expert bomb-maker who left Manchester to run a terrorist network in eastern Libya overseen by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Usama bin Laden’s successor as leader of Al Qaeda. Media in the United Kingdom reported in 2014 that Azzouz had 200 to 300 militants under his control.
How many of those 200-300 “militants” are running around Great Britain now? Have they, like Abedi, escaped serious scrutiny?
CNN is reporting more arrests in England:
Six men and a woman are now in custody in the UK — including six arrests in the Manchester area on Wednesday and a 23-year-old detained Tuesday. None of the suspects have been identified.
The woman was arrested during a raid on a block of flats in Blackley, the Press Association reported, citing Greater Manchester Police.
A man arrested late Wednesday in Nuneaton became the seventh person taken into custody, Greater Manchester Police said. Nuneaton is about 100 miles southeast of Manchester, in the British Midlands.
Up to 3,800 military personnel have been made available following the attack, Secretary Rudd said, and almost 1,000 are deployed.
London’s Metropolitan Police service announced that military personnel would guard “key locations,” and soldiers were seen at Buckingham Palace and extra police at train stations.
So, we have a “lone wolf” terrorist known to authorities whose family loves the jihad. The Libyan government believes Abedi visited Syria while in the Middle East as well, suggesting he hooked up with ISIS and may have been given the names of people to contact to help him carry out his attack.
The terror threat in the UK is still at “critical,” as authorities still believe there is a strong possibility of another attack. With creeping militarization and everyone on edge, how long is it before ordinary citizens begin asking their government why known extremists have the freedom to come and go as they please — even if it’s to and from the Middle East?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member