Volume Three of the Manchester Arena Inquiry has been published, sub-titled: Radicalisation and Preventability. Covered in the 119-page report, the final from the Inquiry, are the radicalisation of the suicide bomber who died in the Monday, May 22, 2017 terror attack, the planning and preparation of the attack and whether it could have been prevented.
The Inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders in a preface to the volume recalled that he heard from members of the Security Service and Counter Terrorism Policing, partly in open evidence hearings but mainly in a closed evidence hearing during November 2021. In the preface he defended some of the volume being closed (on national security grounds) and some open to the public.
In his concluding part of the report, Sirt John wrote: “No one should underestimate the very difficult job that the Security Service and Counter Terrorism Policing do. That job has become more difficult with the emergence of lone actor terrorists whose activities are more difficult to track …. Having said all that, if the Security Service or Counter Terrorism Policing make mistakes then these need to be identified and steps taken to put them right. While the Director General of the Security Service has said that he considers it inevitable that terrorists will get through the measures they put in place in their work to protect the public, he did not mean that it was acceptable for that to happen due to mistakes being made.”
An unnamed witness in the closed hearing told the Inquiry ‘that resource pressure did not have an impact on decisions which were made in relation to’ the bomber. However volume three also reported that in 2016 the Security Service was under increasing (workload) pressure, and had ‘particular pressures within the North West, with the workload in Manchester increasing very quickly’; and that the ‘Security Service had to make hard decisions about where it was to focus its resources’.
The Inquiry heard in open evidence, that at the time of the attack, the Security Service was running about 500 investigations into individuals or groups associated with Islamist terrorism; and had around 3,000 active Subjects of Interest. A north west region Security Service officer recalled before the attack worrying that ‘something inevitably would happen’.
On the radicalisation and ‘extremist mindset’ of the bomber and a brother, Sir John concluded: “It is possible to say, with the benefit of hindsight, that more attention should have been paid by the Security Service and Counter Terrorism Policing to what was happening in Libya.” As for the all-important question of whether the attack could have been prevented, Sir John wrote: “The closed hearings revealed important additional information, and this included one significant missed opportunity that had not previously been understood. I have put as much about that into the public domain as it is possible to do safely. It remains quite impossible to say whether any different or additional action taken by the authorities could have prevented the attack. It might have done; it might not have done.”
Timeline
The future bomber was opened and close as a ‘Subject of Interest’ by the Security Service in 2014; later, in August 2014, the future bomber was evacuated from Libya by a Royal Navy ship. In 2015 he left college in Manchester and began studying at the University of Salford; and was opened and closed as a ‘Subject of Interest’ on the same day. In January 2017 he attended an exam at the University of Salford and only signed his name; and was rung from prison by a man in prison for terrorism offences; and visited the man, at HMP Altcourse; the report later described the prisoner as having ‘ a significant radicalising influence’ on the bomber.
In March, the future bomber hit a priority indicator under the Security Service’s Operation CLEMATIS, its process relating to closed Subjects of Interest. A meeting, arranged to discuss whether to refer the future bomber for further investigative steps, or as the volume also put it ‘further low-level investigative enquiries’, which however turned out to be after the date of the Arena bombing. The future bomber began ‘hostile reconnaissance’ at the Victoria Exchange Complex in Manchester on the evening of Thursday, May 18; on the Friday evening, bought a rucksack used to carry the explosive device; and did more hostile reconnaissance the evening before and the evening of the attack.
Among recommendations, Sir John asks that Home Office ‘consider introducing a system based on a robust assessment of the risk a prisoner poses for radicalisation of others’.
The Inquiry began hearing evidence in September 2020; an older brother of the bomber who was asked but did not provide a witness statement to the Inquiry flew out of the UK in August 2021, having ‘behaved deliberately to defeat’ Sir John’s attempts to hear from him. This case, in the words of the report, ‘demonstrates that leaving a reluctant witness to complete their own witness statement will not provide answers to all relevant questions’.
Volume one went into the stewarding and security of the venue and on the night of the attack, published in summer 2021, while volume two published in November was about the emergency services’ response.
Comments
The Director General of the Security Service MI5 Ken McCallum noted that Sir John found that “there was a realistic possibility that actionable intelligence could have been obtained which might have led to actions preventing the attack.” Ken McCallum said: “I deeply regret that such intelligence was not obtained. Gathering covert intelligence is difficult – but had we managed to seize the slim chance we had, those impacted might not have experienced such appalling loss and trauma. I am profoundly sorry that MI5 did not prevent the attack. The people of MI5 and our policing partners come to work every day to stop terrorism. We continually work to improve the counter-terrorism system; since the terrible events of 2017 we have made more than 100 improvements. More at: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/news/response-to-manchester-arena-inquiry-report.
Head of Counter Terrorism Policing, Met Police Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes said that police will now respond at pace to the findings made by the Inquiry in both its open and closed reports.
