The failure of MI5 to act swiftly on crucial intelligence was a “significant missed opportunity” to take action that might have prevented the Manchester Arena attack, a long-awaited report on the atrocity has concluded.
Sir John Saunders, the chair of the Manchester Arena inquiry, said there was a “realistic possibility” that investigators could have thwarted the plot had they acted more decisively on two key pieces of evidence in the run-up to the bomb.
In the final report of the inquiry, Saunders said it was “quite impossible” to say definitively whether any different action would have prevented the blast.
Nevertheless, he concluded that there was a “significant missed opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack”.
The families of some of the victims described the findings as “devastating” and “unacceptable,” adding: “As a result of these failures, at the very least, a real possibility of preventing this attack was lost. This is a devastating conclusion for us.”
The 226-page report found that:
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Abedi’s return from Libya four days before the blast would have been taken “extremely seriously” by MI5 had key pieces of intelligence been taken more seriously in the months before the blast.
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The spy agency could have found Abedi’s homemade device, stored in a car in Manchester, if an investigation begun at this stage. The attack “might have been prevented” if MI5 had found the vehicle.
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MI5 failed to share two significant pieces of intelligence with counter-terrorism police in the run-up to the blast, amid what Saunders described as a “communication breakdown” between the agencies.
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Abedi’s family holds “significant responsibility” for his extremist beliefs but he should have been referred to the anti-radicalisation scheme, Prevent, up to two years before the attack.
Twenty-two people died and hundreds more were injured when Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May 2017, in what remains the deadliest terror attack in Britain since 7/7.
The “significant missed opportunity” identified by Saunders concerned the handling of two pieces of intelligence by MI5 in the months before the attack.
The report does not describe the nature of these two pieces of intelligence. However, it rejects a previous claim by the security service that they related to “non-terrorist criminality” by Abedi.
Saunders said that on occasion MI5’s “corporate position” did not reflect how its officers viewed this material and instead was more of a “retrospective justification for the actions taken or not taken”.
Unlike previous investigations, the public inquiry heard evidence from the MI5 officers who analysed the information and who testified that together they were of “potential national security concern”.
MI5 witnesses told the inquiry that if the first piece of intelligence had been received today it would have prompted “low-level investigative inquiries, in conjunction with the police”.
Saunders said it was difficult to say whether this could have thwarted the attack but that there was a “material possibility” that it would have led to MI5 or the police learning more about Abedi’s plans.
One MI5 officer, Witness C, believed the second piece of intelligence could be of “pressing national security concern” but failed to raise the alarm promptly, the report found.
It said the agent should have raised concerns to colleagues “straight away” and written a report on the same day but did not do so.
Saunders said he disagreed with MI5’s view that Witness C handled the intelligence in a timely manner, saying they did not provide a report “as promptly as s/he could have” and nor did it contain enough context.
The report concluded: “The delay in providing the report led to the missing of an opportunity to take a potentially important investigative action”
This was significant, Saunders said, because the intelligence gave rise to the “real possibility of obtaining information that might have led to actions which prevented the attack”.
He added: “We cannot know what would have happened, but there is at least the material possibility that opportunities to intervene were missed.”
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The retired high court judge said MI5 would have taken “extremely seriously” Abedi’s return from Libya, where he had been fighting alongside Islamists, had they taken firmer action on this intelligence.
Abedi returned from Libya four days before the attack and used this time to construct the bomb while trying to evade surveillance.
Saunders said tougher action could have led to the attacker being followed to the Nissan Micra where he had stored his homemade explosives.
Abedi went to check on the car just over an hour after returning to the UK. He then checked in to the rented city centre flat where he built the device, before undertaking his first reconnaissance mission to the arena.
The report said: “Having considered the CCTV evidence showing how [Abedi] behaved around the Nissan Micra on 18 May 2017, I find that, in the event that Security Service officers had successfully followed [Abedi] to the Nissan Micra, the attack might have been prevented.”
In a statement at Manchester Hall, where families of the victims had gathered to read the report, Saunders said it was not possible to reach a firm conclusion on whether the attack “would have been prevented”.
But he said: “There was a realistic possibility that actionable intelligence could have been obtained which might have led to actions preventing the attack.
“The reasons for this missed opportunity included a failure by the security service, in my view, to act swiftly enough.”
He added: “I am aware that revealing what I have revealed in part 24 of my report will leave many people and particularly the bereaved families wanting to know more. All I can say is that I have done my best to reveal what I can.”
The report describes how an MI5 officer based in north-west England told the inquiry that it was “struggling to cope” with the demand in 2017, when the agency was running about 500 investigations into suspected Islamist extremists with a further 5,000 active subjects of interest.
The witness, the report reveals, recalled telling their manager before the attack that “something inevitably would happen at some point”. Nevertheless, the chairman said this pressure on resources was not to blame for the missed opportunity.
The public inquiry, which began in September 2020, heard from 267 witnesses over 196 days of evidence.
It previously concluded that Abedi should have been identified as a security threat on the night of the attack, and that at least two victims could have survived had they not faced an “interminable” wait for treatment by the emergency services.
