LONDON
\nMI5 missed \u201cobvious\u201d intelligence ahead of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing after \u201cjumping to the wrong conclusions,\u201d a British judge has said.
\nIn an interview for \u201cWhen Worlds Collide,\u201d a two-part ITV documentary on the bombing, Lord Anderson of Ipswich QC said \u201cmistakes were made\u201d by the security service when it was assessing information before the attack, which killed 22 people as they left an Ariana Grande concert.
\nMI5 has refused to release the secret intelligence it received, but Anderson said it was important and linked the bomber Salman Abedi to terrorism months before the attack.
\n\u201cMI5 interpreted that intelligence as relating to ordinary crime,\u201d he said. \u201cWith hindsight, it\u2019s pretty obvious that that intelligence related to a developing terrorist plot. Now, we all make mistakes, we all misunderstand things that we are told, we all jump to conclusions and that\u2019s what happened in this case.\u201d
\nAnderson, a former reviewer of terrorism legislation in Britain, assessed the intelligence processed by MI5, which he published seven months after the blast.
\nAbedi was investigated in 2014 when he was 19, three years before the attack, but his case was shut down and he was never reassessed despite being identified in eight more investigations.
\nAnderson said MI5 monitored former targets by setting up \u201ctripwires\u201d to assess future investigations.
\nAbedi was picked up by these tripwires, which showed that he was \u201csomebody who looked as though he might deserve a priority investigation.\u201d
\nAnderson said: \u201cThe tripwire is automatic, it takes you a certain way, but it is not a substitute for human beings meeting in a room to pull together the evidence they have.
\n\u201cAs a consequence of that, the meeting was fixed for May 31. The plot ran faster than the process and on May 22 he detonated his backpack.\u201d
\nMI5 has accepted that it was wrong to have not stopped and questioned Abedi when he returned from Libya four days before he blew himself up at Manchester Arena.
\n\u201cThe powers of the police at the airport are very strong indeed. They can compel people to answer questions, there is no right of silence,\u201d Anderson said.
\nHe added that Abedi, who was on two separate occasions listed as a person of interest, \u201cwas known to have certain quite radical views and he had a travel history that was enough to justify pulling him over and asking him some questions.
\n\u201cMI5 themselves accepted to me that this is what should have happened. At the end of the day, mistakes were made. Whether they would have made a difference is another matter.
\n\u201cMI5 say it\u2019s not very likely that we could have prevented the attacks anyway. I prefer to emphasise that we simply can\u2019t know.\u201d
\nAnderson said intelligence received twice before the attack was not used properly because its \u201csignificance was not fully appreciated at the time.\u201d
\nSir John Saunders, chairman of the Manchester Arena inquiry, will publish his conclusions later this year.
\nMI5\u2019s director general of counterterrorism told the inquiry: \u201cIn our view it was a reasonable judgment to make that he (Abedi) was not associated with terrorism and reasonable not to reopen the investigation on that basis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON MI5 missed \u201cobvious\u201d intelligence ahead of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing after \u201cjumping to the wrong conclusions,\u201d a British judge has said. In an interview for \u201cWhen Worlds Collide,\u201d a two-part ITV documentary on the bombing, Lord Anderson of Ipswich QC said \u201cmistakes were made\u201d by the security service when it was assessing information […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-254446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n