THE judge-led inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grand concert in May 2017 finally published its finding yesterday after a two-and-a-half-year investigation.
The atrocity, which killed 22 young people attending the event with hundreds injured, was carried out by Salam Abedi a 22-year-old British born son of Libyan parents living in the Manchester area.
In previous findings published by the inquiry it has been claimed that Abedi had been ‘flagged up’ to MI5 and the security services on three separate occasions as a person of concern that he was showing signs of radicalisation and mixing with terrorist suspects.
This doesn’t begin to cover the extent to which MI5 not only had knowledge of his terrorist activities but stand accused of actively encouraging and facilitating them.
The Independent newspaper reported in 2017 that MI5 had been warned by the American FBI that Abedi was planning an attack in the UK and that he had been placed on a US terrorist watch list in 2016 following an investigation into terrorist groups operating in Libya.
An FBI source told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The information came from the interception of his communications by US Federal agents and from information unearthed in Libya, where his family was linked to terrorist groups.’
The terrorist group that Abedi and his family were linked to was the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) well known for organising amongst the large community of Libyan exiles in the Manchester area.
The LIFG were dedicated to the overthrow of the secular Libyan government led by Colonel Gadaffi.
It was so well known, that the LIFG had been proscribed by the UK government as a terrorist group, which seeks a ‘hardline Islamic state in Libya with the Home Office saying it was ‘part of a wider global Islamist movement, as inspired by al-Qaeda’.
In fact, all the evidence points to LIFG having been cultivated and used by MI5 for decades to be used as a weapon to oust Gadaffi by promoting a jihadist uprising.
Despite having intimate connections with this terrorist group that was proscribed and subject to stringent travel restrictions it has been revealed that Abedi, and other members of the group, were allowed unrestricted travel to and from Libya.
In fact, control orders against members of jihadist groups were lifted by the UK and they were allowed to travel to Libya in 2011.
This was when the war by imperialism to destroy Gadaffi and seize Libya and its vast oil reserves was intensifying with the UK, France and the US carrying out airstrikes and sending in special forces to overthrow the Libyan government.
In this war against Libya, Abedi and his fellow Islamist jihadists were not the enemy of the British state but servants of imperialism, allies to be used to further a brutal war that destroyed Libya as an advanced wealthy nation killing thousands and creating millions of refugees in the process.
This is why at the height of an anti-terror alert Abedi was confident enough to walk into the Arena with a massive bomb on his back and murder 22 young people.
Abedi was not a ‘lone wolf’ who slipped through the net because of mistakes on the part of MI5 operatives, even the inquiry couldn’t accept this evasion.
The father of the youngest victim of the atrocity, 8-year-old Saffie Roussos, has said that MI5 has ‘blood on its hands’. In fact, the entire British state has the blood of the victims of the Manchester bombing on its hands along with the millions in Libya and the Middle East who have been killed in imperialist wars.
The capitalist state and its security apparatus bears the responsibility for fostering these Islamist terrorists to act as their servants in their drive to control the region and its oil resources.
The only way to protect the lives of workers and youth in the UK and the lives of the masses throughout the world is to put an end to capitalism and its imperialist wars by bringing it down and replacing it with socialism.
Only the victory of the socialist revolution can put an end to all the atrocities committed by imperialism and make sure there will never be another Manchester Arena atrocity.
