UK police: Others may be at large in Manchester attack

Armed police at the scene during a vigil in Albert Square, Manchester, the day after the suicide attack at an Ariana Grande concert that left 22 people dead. (AP)

LONDON: The attacker who bombed an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester was not part of a large network, but other people involved in the crime may still be at large, a senior police officer said Thursday.
Russ Jackson, head of counterterrorism policing for northwest England, said police may make more arrests in the investigation into the attack.
Salman Abedi, a Briton of Libyan heritage, detonated a homemade knapsack bomb as crowds were leaving Manchester Arena on May 22, killing 22 people and himself. More than 200 others were wounded.
In the days after the attack, police arrested 22 people on suspicion of terrorism offenses and said they had rounded up a large part of Abedi’s network. But all the suspects were subsequently released without charge.
“We don’t have evidence of a large network,” Jackson told reporters at an update on the investigation. “We do, however, suspect others were either aware or complicit in the knowledge of this attack.”
Jackson said police have reconstructed Abedi’s movements in the weeks before the attack, as he obtained components and built his deadly device.
On the day of the bombing, Abedi spent several hours carrying the bomb, packed with nuts and bolts, though central Manchester before detonating it in the foyer of the arena as the Grande concert was ending.
Jackson said the investigation “is likely to run on for many more months to come.”
“We are examining all sorts of lines of inquiry and it is possible more arrests and searches will take place,” he said.
Detectives want to question Abedi’s younger brother Hashem, who has been detained in Libya, and are “engaging with” British prosecutors and Libyan authorities, Jackson said.
The violence and political instability that have engulfed the North African country since the 2011 fall of Muammar Qaddafi could complicate efforts to interview the younger Abedi.
A Libyan counterterrorism official has said Hashem Abedi knew that his brother was planning something, and said Salman Abedi had been radicalized in Britain.
British officials have said Abedi had been on the radar of the country’s intelligence services but was considered a peripheral figure.
“We are still working to understand the manner by which he became radicalized,” Jackson said.
Britain said Thursday it had begun housing Islamist extremists in separate prison units to prevent them radicalizing other inmates, as it grapples with a mounting terror threat.
A new “separation center” has been opened at Frankland jail near Durham, northeast England, the Interior Ministry said.
It is first of three centers, which together will have a capacity of 28 inmates.
“The most dangerous and subversive offenders are now being separated from those they seek to influence and convert,” said the minister for prisons, Sam Gyimah.
The move was recommended by a review into extremism in prisons published last year, which highlighted similar schemes in the Netherlands, France and Spain.
It found some “charismatic” prisoners were acting as self-styled “emirs” and exerting a controlling and radicalizing influence on the wider Muslim prison population, and also found some “aggressive encouragement” to convert to Islam.
The review also highlighted incidents of unsupervised collective worship, intimidation of prison imams and the availability of extremist literature.
The Interior Ministry said 4,500 frontline prison staff had received specialist training on how to identify and challenge extremist views, adding that new recruits would receive the training as standard.
Britain has suffered a string of terror attacks in recent months, and police say they have foiled 18 plots since 2013.
Official figures show there were 186 people in custody for terrorism-related offenses and domestic extremism on March 31 this year, up 15 percent on the previous year.
In the year to March, 304 people had been arrested for terrorism-related offenses — the highest number since records began in September 2001, and an annual increase of 18 percent.
Of these, 108 were charged and 88 were released on bail pending further investigation.
In the same year, 70 terrorism-related trials were completed by state prosecutors — up 55 percent from 51 in the previous year, with 68 resulting in convictions.