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The head of MI5 has said he is “profoundly sorry” that the intelligence agency failed to prevent the Manchester Arena attack.

Ken McCallum, the director general of the Security Service, said he “deeply regretted” that his officers failed to gather intelligence that could have foiled the plot, after a public inquiry concluded it was a “significant missed opportunity”.

In a statement following the publication of the inquiry’s damning report, Mr McCallum said: “MI5 exists to stop atrocities.  To all those whose lives were forever changed on that awful night: I am so sorry that MI5 did not prevent the attack at the Manchester Arena.”

The damning report concluded that MI5 missed a “significant” opportunity to prevent the Manchester Arena attack by failing to act on intelligence which could have uncovered the bomb.

The Security Service received a vital piece of information about Salman Abedi before he murdered 22 people in May 2017, but did not act swiftly enough on it , the public inquiry into the atrocity found.

It could have led officers directly to the Nissan Micra, parked outside Devell House in the Rusholme area of Manchester, where he was storing the homemade device, the report said. He detonated it four days later in a crowd outside an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena.

Sir John Saunders, the inquiry chairman, said a better response from MI5 “might have prevented the attack” and concluded the intelligence agency took a “risky” approach to investigating returnees from Libya.

He identified five other failings of the MI5 and counter-terrorism police:

• Abedi not being correctly categorised as a formal subject of interest, which would have led to a formal assessment of the threat he posed in the years before the attack. Instead, he was categorised as a lower-level ‘de-facto’ subject of interest in 2014 and in 2016.
• Twice failing to refer Abedi to the Prevent deradicalisation programme, in 2014 and 2015/16.
• Failure to analyse over 1,000 text messages exchanged between Abedi and a jailed terrorist, Abdalraouf Abdallah, in 2014.
• A delay downloading the contents of an illicit mobile phone used by Abdallah in jail, seized in February 2017 but not examined until June 2017, weeks after the bombing.
• The “risky” decision to focus on the terror threat from the Islamic State terror group in Syria “meant that both the Security Service and CTPNW (Counter-Terrorism Policing North West) underestimated the risk from Libya in 2017”.

The evidence of MI5 and counter-terrorism police was given amid significant secrecy, much to the anger of survivors and bereaved families.

Four MI5 witnesses and 10 police officers gave evidence in secret after Sir John agreed that national security could be compromised if it was aired in public. A “gist”, or summary, of the secret hearings was read into the public record.

Abedi came from a Libyan family who were said to harbour extremist views and likely learnt to build the suicide bomb with his brother and co-conspirator, Hashem, during one of their visits to the country.

MI5 came close to uncovering the deadly plot when they received a piece of intelligence which could have led to Abedi being stopped when he returned to the UK from Libya four days before the bombing.

The specific nature of the intelligence has not been disclosed to the public for national security reasons, but Sir John said the first MI5 officer to assess it failed to discuss it with colleagues straight away and did not write a report on it the same day as they should have.

When the MI5 officer did eventually write the report, it “did not contain sufficient context”, Sir John said.

“The delay in providing the report led to the missing of an opportunity to take a potentially important investigative action,” the report said.

There was said to be a “real possibility” that a quick investigation would have produced “actionable intelligence” and meant Abedi’s return to the UK on May 18, 2017 “would have been treated extremely seriously by the Security Service”.

The report continued: “This could have led to (Abedi) being followed to the Nissan Micra which contained the explosive.”

If Abedi had been stopped at Manchester Airport four days before the attack, Sir John said, there was a chance officers would have found him to be in possession of the switch for the bomb.

His 226-page report also pinned “significant responsibility” on Abedi’s family for the radicalisation of Salman and Hashem, as well as criticising Didsbury mosque for downplaying its links to the bomber. Hashem was jailed for 55 years in 2020 for his role in helping to plan the attack.

Sir John went on to express concern about a “communication breakdown” between MI5 and counter-terror police, which meant an earlier piece of intelligence about Abedi was not shared by the Security Service.

The bomber had first come onto MI5’s radar in December 2010 and was designated a “subject of interest” on several occasions in the years that followed.

The amount of intelligence indicating Abedi was at risk of radicalisation should have resulted in him being referred to the Prevent programme, the inquiry found.

He was also known to be in contact with a convicted terrorist, Abdalraouf Abdallah. Abdallah used an illicit mobile phone to call a number linked to Abedi on 11 occasions between January and February 2017.

Sir John concluded MI5 had more broadly “underestimated the risk from Libya in 2017” as it was chiefly focused on the danger posed by extremists returning from Syria.

The report said: “The threshold that the Security Service applied when deciding whether to investigate any returnee from Libya was, in my view, too high and amounted to a risky position.”

In a pointed broadside, Sir John accused MI5 of adopting a corporate position in its evidence which sought to provide “a retrospective justification for the actions taken or not taken”, rather than reflecting what officers “did, thought, or would have done” at the relevant times.

The inquiry’s work was disrupted on several occasions by individuals linked to Abedi refusing to cooperate. Sir John used his report to call for new powers to be put in place to stop key witnesses from fleeing the UK after Abedi’s older brother, Ismail, returned to Libya when he was due to give evidence .

He is believed to still be in Libya and is subject to an arrest warrant for failing to comply with an order to appear before the inquiry.

Sir John said: “In my view, there should be statutory powers available to the High Court capable of applying short-term restrictions on the movements of a citizen who is a material witness to an inquiry.”

In his recommendations, Sir John called for a new scheme to be established to prevent “extremist prisoners from radicalising those who visit them”.

The report is the third and final set of findings delivered by Sir John’s inquiry.

Following the report’s publication, families bereaved by the atrocity said they were “devastated” by its conclusions.

A statement on behalf of 11 families was given by Richard Scorer, a lawyer from Slater and Gordon.

He said: “The failures exposed in this report are unacceptable. The public are entitled to expect that information of national security importance will be acted on speedily, and – crucially – that the system will ensure that this happens. It must do so in the future. We note that Sir John will be making recommendations in his closed report. We trust that these recommendations will be acted on, and that Sir John will be vigilant in monitoring their implementation. ”

Meanwhile, Caroline Curry, who lost her son Liam, 19, in the bombing, delivered a statement on behalf of herself and Lisa and Mark Rutherford, who lost their daughter, Chloe, 17.

“From top to bottom, from MI5 to the associates of the attacker, we will always believe you played a part in the murder of our children,” she said.

“We will never forgive the attackers, or those who assisted them, and nor can we forgive those professionals who failed to act appropriately on the night.”

In a public statement, Sir John apologised to the bereaved families that he had not been able to answer all their questions and that his report may have “raised more questions in their mind”.

“I am sorry, but that was inevitable,” he added.

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The six opportunities missed by MI5 to stop the Manchester bombing

It was in 2010, at the age of 15, that the schoolboy Salman Abedi first came to the attention of MI5.

For seven years he drifted on and off the security service’s radar more than 20 times, yet when potentially critical information about his murderous plot fell into the hands of the spies in the days before the Manchester Arena bombing, they failed to grasp its significance.

The failure was catastrophic. Just four days after arriving back into the country from war-torn Libya, Abedi detonated a sophisticated homemade bomb, killing 22 people as they left an Ariana Grande concert.

The intelligence blunder was one of six key failings by MI5 and counter-terrorism police that Sir John Saunders, the chairman of the Manchester Arena inquiry, identified in his third and final set of findings.

The actionable intelligence

In the damning report, Sir John, a retired judge, found that MI5 missed a “significant” opportunity to thwart by failing to act on intelligence which could have uncovered Abedi’s bombs.

Sir John said a better response from MI5 “might have prevented the attack” and could have led officers directly to the Nissan Micra, parked outside a block of flats called Devell House in the Rusholme area of Manchester. Inside lay his explosive device.

There was said to be a “real possibility” that a quick investigation would have produced “actionable intelligence” and meant Abedi’s return to the UK from Libya on May 18 2017 “would have been treated extremely seriously by the Security Service”.

There had been a second piece of intelligence relating to Abedi which MI5 had received slightly earlier.

The inquiry heard that, if the same intelligence were received today, Abedi would have been “opened as a low-level lead”. In isolation, Sir John concluded it was unlikely to have led to the plot being uncovered.

Subject of interest

Having first come to the attention of MI5 in 2010 when counter-terror police linked him to an address that was relevant to one of its investigations, three years later he was suspected of being an associate of someone being monitored by the security service.

He was designated a so-called Tier 3 subject of interest – someone who was not involved in the main activity under investigation – in March 2014, but his case was closed just months later in July.

The same year Abedi and his brother Hashem travelled to Libya and were among 110 Britons evacuated by the Royal Navy’s HMS Enterprise. Neither the Ministry of Defence nor police conducted a debriefing with them.

The following year he was identified as being in contact with another suspect under surveillance for links to al-Qaeda and helping jihadists travel to Syria. He was later found to be speaking with another “longstanding” extremist and made a subject of interest again. MI5 initially thought that Abedi had been in direct contact with a senior member of ISIL, but this was a “misunderstanding” and when they realised he was communicating with the terror group through a third person, they closed his case on the same day they had opened it.

He was categorised a de-facto subject of interest between 2015 and 2016, a term that security service witnesses and experts told the inquiry they did not recognise. Sir John said this was “not helpful” as if he had been formally made a subject of interest, intelligence officers would have needed to make a formal assessment to close the case and therefore missed “a valuable opportunity to take stock of the intelligence that is held”. MI5 had received information about Abedi on “several occasions” including his support for the Islamic State.

No attempts to deradicalise

Following the concerns about Abedi’s activity in 2015 and 2016 he should have been referred to Prevent, the government’s deradicalisation programme, Sir John found. A referral could have seen him monitored by a multi-agency panel including councils, police and educational authorities but none were made.

During this period Abedi had “displayed signs of affiliation with or support for Islamic State”, including comments he had made while watching TV with friends.

Sir John also said that while at Trafford College between September 2013 and June 2015, a staff member saw a picture of him with a gun in Tripoli on his phone. This “was another potential indicator of extremism” and that  “cumulatively with the other indicators I have identified, should have justified a referral to Prevent”, Sir John said.

Messages with a convicted terrorist

The report found that Abedi’s friends were involved in drug dealing or other crime and Sir John said that as a result he “had almost no close connections or friendships that would tie him to law‑abiding society”.

Among Abedi’s close friends was Abdalraouf Abdallah, a terrorist who returned to Manchester with “a hero status among impressionable young men” after being injured fighting in Libya and had an “important role” in radicalising Abedi. Raphael Hostey, an Islamic State fighter killed in a drone strike in Syria, was also likely to have influenced the bomber.

Abdallah had known Abedi since they were children and the pair texted each other around 1,000 times where they discussed “martyrdom, the maidens of paradise, and a senior figure within al-Qaeda and his death”. Abdallah was convicted of terror offences in May 2016, and while awaiting trial he attempted to call Abedi 38 times from prison.

Abdallah’s text messages were discovered during the counter-terror investigation into him and formed part of the case at his trial, but it was not established Abedi had been in contact until after the bombing.

Delay in examining terrorist’s illicit phone

Abedi had visited Abdallah with two associates in January 2017 at HMP Altcourse, where they spent an hour and 47 minutes talking. He ordered his first bomb-making chemicals the same day.

The mobile used by Abdallah was seized in February 2017, but the billing information was not requested until May and not examined until June 2017, weeks after Abedi had committed the attack. Det Ch Supt Dominic Scally accepted the billing data should have been obtained within a month of the phone’s contents being downloaded in March and Sir John said that it was a “concerning delay” that intelligence about a convicted terrorist and “potential radicaliser” was not analysed quicker.

The ‘risky’ strategy of MI5

Sir John expressed concern that MI5 appeared to be so fixated on the threat posed by terrorists returning from Syria, that they “underestimated” the risk from Libya.

It was in Libya where Abedi first became truly radicalised, taking up arms in the civil war against the forces of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi alongside his extremist father in 2011.

The inquiry concluded it was likely Abedi learnt how to build a viable bomb while visiting the country in 2017.

Sir John found the threshold MI5 applied when deciding whether to investigate returnees from Libya was “too high” and amounted to a “risky position”.

This was particularly so, he said, because MI5’s own Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre identified in 2010 “a danger of radicalisation of young members of the Libyan community in Manchester”.

Abedi came to MI5’s attention again in 2017, and on May 1, three weeks before the attack, the agency triaged Abedi’s case and decided it met the criteria for further investigation.

He was one of 26 individuals referred to Operation Daffodil for consideration of further “low level” investigative techniques into whether he had re-engaged with Islamist extremism. A meeting to discuss the case was due to be held on May 31, nine days after the attack.

Flood waters rage in Turkey after February’s deadly earthquakes

Brussels has been warned to be “very wary” about approving funds to Turkey in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should not be trusted to use the money wisely, it has been warned. The European Union and international donors on Monday pledged €7 billion (£6.2 billion) to help Turkey and Syria in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated parts of the neighbouring countries last month.

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The European Commission said after the fundraising conference in Brussels that €6.05 billion of the total pledge will be going to Turkey, in grants and loans.

The Commission added: “The European Commission and the EU Member States, as well as the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development represent more than 50 percent of this total pledge of grants, with €3.6 billion euros.”

But in a warning to the Commission over disbursing funds to Ankara, Dr Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Express.co.uk the bloc should be “very wary about shovelling money into Mr Erdogan’s pockets”.

He said: “While nobody can fail to be moved by the scale of human suffering caused by Turkey’s earthquake, the EU should be very wary about shovelling money into Mr Erdogan’s pockets in terms of relief.

Ursula von der Leyen pledged funds to Turkey to rebuild the country after the earthquake and floods (Image: Getty)

Erdogan put the cost of reconstruction at $104 billion (Image: Getty)

“The disaster has highlighted the corruption endemic in Turkish infrastructure projects seeing as earthquake preparations that should have been in place were mishandled.

“Any funds sent to Erdogan should therefore be carefully scrutinised and only released in tranches where it has been proven they have been used for the purposes intended.”

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6 killed more than 52,000 people — the vast majority in Turkey.

Nearly 300,000 buildings in Turkey either collapsed or were severely damaged, according to the country’s president.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the time: “We have shown to the people in Turkey and Syria that we are supporting those in need.”

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Von der Leyen added that the global pledge included €1.1 billion from the Commission, and 500 millions from the European Investment Bank, backed by the EU budget.

Erdogan addressed the conference via videolink and described some of the reconstruction challenges, including deadly floods that hit parts of the earthquake zone last week.

He said: “Some of the aftershocks have been going on for a while and they are of equal magnitude to a separate earthquake.

“We have been fighting against the flood disasters and challenging weather conditions.”

Erdogan said some 298,000 buildings across 11 provinces affected by the earthquake were destroyed or left unfit for use.

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The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6 killed more than 52,000 people (Image: Getty)

He added: “No single country can fight against such a disaster, regardless of its level of economic development.

“Your contributions made at this conference will contribute to the healing of wounds and wipe clean the traces of this disaster.”

He put the cost of reconstruction at $104 billion.

The conference hosted by the European Commission and Sweden — which holds the rotating presidency of the EU — was attended by NGOs, G-20 countries and UN members as well as international financial institutions.

Survivors of the earthquake in rebel-held northwest Syria have received very little assistance because of deep divisions exacerbated by the country’s 12-year war. The EU said 15.3 million Syrians of a population of 21.3 million already required humanitarian assistance before the earthquake struck.

The bloc has been providing humanitarian aid to Syria since 2011 and wants to step it up. But it does not intend to help with reconstruction in the war-torn country, with EU sanctions against the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad in place due to its continued crackdown against civilians.

Von der Leyen said the Commission pledged an additional €108 million in humanitarian aid for Syria on Monday.

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