POLICE and private security failed to apprehend the Manchester bomber, the damning report published by the public inquiry has concluded. Inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders found there were missed opportunities to prevent the ‘devastating impact’.
Saunders revealed there was no security at the venue at all. The teenagers that the private company responsible, SMG and Showsec, had employed as ‘security’ had no training at all. Despite Manchester being on a high terror alert level, the bomber Abedi was confident enough to walk into the venue with a massive explosive backpack, and then sit down for twenty minutes in a quiet spot saying his prayers.
Two of the youth ‘security’ reported this to officials, but they were ignored. Abedi was allowed to explode his device. Twenty-two people died in the bombing. Hundreds more were also injured when Manchester-born Abedi, who was of Libyan descent, walked across the foyer of the arena at the end of the Ariana Grande concert and detonated the bomb at 10.31pm on 22 May 2017.
The bomber and his brother were known to the UK authorities since they had gone to Libya to join the terror forces fighting Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi. They were allowed to leave the UK and allowed to return. In fact, the war to remove and murder Gadaffi to grab Libya’s oil was prepared and led by the UK and France.
It was Tony Blair who persuaded Gadaffi to give up Libya’s weapons of mass destruction. Libya was disarmed so that any prospect of Libyan forces attacking targets in the UK and France with major weaponry was removed.
It was French aircraft that bombed Gadaffi’s convoy seriously wounding him and placing him in the hands of the Islamists who stabbed him to death in the most brutal fashion. It was special SAS forces that played a major role in breaking through the Libyan defences to take the capital city Tripoli and remove the Gadaffi government.
Both British PM Cameron and French president Sarkozy travelled to Benghazi to celebrate the victory of the Islamists and to organise them to proceed to attack Syria, to cleanse North Africa and the Middle East of Arab nationalists and socialists.
Salman Abedi and his Islamist associates were servants of US and French imperialism, and were never seen as a potential threat to the lives of thousands of citizens of Manchester. Abedi and others returned from Libya to Manchester where they were able to plan to kill workers and young people without any problems from their imperialist masters.
This was why, at the height of an anti-terror alert, Abedi was able to operate and plan to bomb Manchester without any hindrance from the UK state forces.
As far as the UK state was concerned, he remained their servant and lived amongst the Libyan community in Manchester plotting to murder the working people of Manchester and their children.
France paid a similar price for its support for Libyan terrorists who carried out a number of bombing attacks on French workers and youth.
At the height of an anti-terror alert in the Manchester area, MI5 was completely passive and refused to act to secure the Manchester Arena, where thousands were due to gather. The British Transport Police, whose job it was to secure the arena, went missing on the night, leaving security in the hands of a group of innocent teenagers.
Abedi was confident enough to enter the Arena with a massive backpack and did not flee when a couple of the youth security talked to him and reported his presence to their bosses.
The fact of the matter is the Libyan Islamists took MI6 and the British security establishment for a gigantic ride, with 22 corpses and grieving families paying the price for the refusal of the security agencies to secure the arena during a ‘terror alert’.
The bombing was allowed to happen. The security guards deserted their posts and the lives of thousands were put at risk, to the point of the Fire Brigade being told to keep its distance after the explosion since there could be other bombs.
It is clear that securing the lives of workers and youth in the UK requires the breaking up of the capitalist state and all of its security agencies, and the working class becoming the ruling class in a planned socialist economy. Only the WRP and the YS fights for this perspective. Join up today!
