Ariana Grande concert
Attack victims sue British secret service: “This should never have happened”
Young people commemorate the Manchester attack
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Seven years after the Manchester attack, the victims are suing the British secret service. Among them: Andrew Roussos, father of an eight-year-old who was killed.
Eight-year-old Saffie-Rose was the youngest victim. “She was a human magnet full of love,” father Andrew Roussos told British media. Lisa Roussos, the girl’s mother, accompanied her to the concert. She didn’t find out about her daughter’s death until six weeks later. By this time, the Queen had already expressed her deep condolences and there was public mourning across the country. But Roussos was in a coma. When she woke up, she already suspected that something was wrong: “I knew… I just knew,” Roussos later told the BBC television station. “I was so badly injured and she was a tiny eight-year-old, what chance did she have?”
The attack could have been stopped
Together with hundreds of survivors and relatives, the Roussos have now filed a lawsuit against the British secret service. The victims and survivors accuse MI5 of ignoring warnings and misjudging the perpetrator. “None of this should have happened,” Andrew Roussos told Sky News television. “If I had known how unprepared this country is for something like this, I would have protected her myself.”
The perpetrator, Salman Abedi, 22, detonated a homemade bomb in the foyer of the Manchester Arena on May 22, 2017. A concert by US pop singer Ariana Grande was just ending there. The attack particularly affected the young fans and parents who had come to pick up their children.
An official investigation commissioned by the British Home Office concluded in March that the crime could possibly have been prevented. Specifically, the investigators classified two important pieces of evidence as not being related to terrorism. An official admitted that he had found one of these tips to be “security-relevant” but had neglected to discuss it directly with colleagues – and had postponed writing up the report until the next day. The 207-page final report states that “the late delivery of the report resulted in a missed opportunity to take a potentially important investigative action.”
Abedi could have been traced to the Nissan Micra in which he stored explosives, which he later used to build the bomb in an apartment. In addition, MI5 could have stopped the 22-year-old at Manchester Airport four days before the attack when he returned from Libya, the investigation report said. Whether the bomb would have been prevented by the intervention is “pretty impossible,” said the chairman of the commission of inquiry, Sir John Saunders.
Who helped prepare the attack?
According to the report, Abedi was also probably supported in the preparations from Libya, although it was not possible to determine from whom. The terrorist organization Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attack, but the short, general statement did not name the attacker and some of the facts of the attack appeared to be incorrect. The perpetrator’s younger brother, Hasham Abedi, also helped prepare the attack. In 2020 he was sentenced to at least 55 years in prison for 22 counts of murder.
After the report was published, the Director General of MI5 apologized. “I deeply regret that MI5 was unable to prevent the attack,” said Ken McCallum. The secret service missed a “crucial opportunity” to stop the perpetrator. MI5 has made more than 100 improvements since the attack, British media report.
First ever lawsuit against MI5
For Andrew Roussos, father of the eight-year-old who was killed, the apology comes too late. “If they wanted to apologize honestly, they would have done so on day one and not after an investigation had established their guilt,” he told British media.
More than 250 people have joined the class action lawsuit against MI5, represented by three law firms. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is responsible for the security authorities and secret services, is responsible. It is the first ever lawsuit against MI5, according to the British media.
Sources: CBS, BBC, British Royalty, Washington Post, Sky NewsDPA