If there has been one constant in Hashem Abedi’s miserable life it has been the determined failure of the British state to protect its citizens from men like him. Abedi is accused of inflicting ‘life-threatening injuries’ on three prison officers in an attack at HMP Frankland on Saturday. Injuries are said to include ‘burns, scalds and stab wounds’, with Abedi reported to have scalded the guards with hot cooking oil and stabbed them with improvised weapons. Two men remain in hospital as of writing.
Abedi was jailed for a minimum of 55 years after being found guilty on 22 counts of murder for his role in the Manchester Arena attack. Hashem helped his brother Salman obtain the chemicals to produce triacetone triperoxide (TATP). Hashem and Salman fashioned prototypes of their bomb from oil cans and pizza sauce tins, cramming them with nails and screws to maximise casualties.
Although the finished product was assembled by Salman, sentencing judge Mr Justice Baker was ‘entirely satisfied’ that Salman was ‘only enabled to do so as a result of the extensive preparation work’ which had been conducted along with Hashem. Moreover, the TATP procured by Hashem was the explosive used to give the Arena bomb its deadly reach, which saw it kill 22 people, including children, attending an Ariana Grande concert. Salman was killed in the explosion, and off he popped to Paradise to collect his 72 virgins, while Hashem was arrested and later extradited from Libya.
Saturday was not Hashem’s first attack on prison service staff. In 2020, he and two other Islamist terrorists assaulted Paul Edwards, a 57-year-old guard at HMP Belmarsh. Edwards had scalp lacerations, a bruised rib cage, a bruised back, and long-term hearing damage in the ambush, which was described by a witness as a ‘vicious attack’ in which Abedi and his accomplices behaved ‘like a pack of animals’. Abedi was sentenced to a further three years and ten months. This raises an obvious question: why was a mass-murdering terrorist with a history of violence against prison staff allowed access to cooking oil and the means to heat it? As Mark Fairhurst of the Prison Officers’ Association says: ‘These prisoners need only receive their basic entitlements and we should concentrate on control and containment instead of attempting to appease them.’
This is only the latest example of the state failing to contain Hashem Abedi. The original sin goes back to 1993 when his parents Ramadan and Samia were allowed into the country as asylum seekers from Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, where they claimed to face political repression. He and his wife eventually settled in Manchester, where they gave birth to six children, including Hashem, Salman, and their older brother Ismail. Then, in 2011, they moved back to Libya for two years.
Cynics among you might be thinking: ‘So much for the terrible repression they were facing there.’ But there’s actually a perfectly logical explanation: Ramadan was fighting in the Libyan civil war. The Saunders inquiry determined it to be ‘likely’ that he was a member of the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an Islamist militia opposed to Gaddafi, and also ‘likely’ that his sons, then 16 (Salman) and 14 (Hashem) ‘had some involvement in fighting during the civil war’. It’s nice when families spend quality time together. We also know about Ramadan’s activities in Libya thanks to an interview in the Guardian in which a fellow Mancunian, who had also travelled back home to participate in the war, described bumping into Ramadan in the mountains and recognising him from Didsbury mosque. It truly is a small world.
The family returned to Manchester in 2013, but by the following year Salman and Hashem were back in Libya during the second round of the civil war. Thankfully, the Royal Navy was on hand to help evacuate them because, and I quote, ‘extremist militias were fighting in the area’. We wouldn’t want our moderate militias to get caught up with any extremist militias.
The public inquiry found that the brothers were ‘radicalised in Libya to a significant extent’, that they received ‘training or assistance in how to build a bomb’ there, and that their family held ‘significant responsibility’ for their radicalisation, including Ramadan, Samia and Ismail, each of whom had ‘held extremist views’ which ‘influenced’ Salman and Hashem’s worldviews. They were also influenced by Abdalraouf Abdallah, who fought in Libya, has been convicted of terrorism offences, and, as seems inevitable at this point, was from Manchester.
All of this, they missed. Salman was known to the security services, first being brought to their attention in 2010, 2013, 2014, on several occasions in 2015, and again in 2016. The Saunders inquiry decided there was ‘a significant missed opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack’, and criticised a security services agent who assessed two key items of evidence, recognised the possibility of a national security risk, but failed to write up a report the same day. A breakdown in communication between spooks and counter-terror cops was also cited.
Hashem Abedi should never have been able to assault those prison officers because he should never have been allowed the privileges that let him do so.
He and his brother should never have been able to murder 22 people at a concert because the threat they posed should have been understood and acted upon sooner.
They should never have been rescued from Libya by the Royal Navy, and had they not, those 22 people would still be alive today.
They should never have been allowed to travel to Libya with their father and back again, because British Islamists who join paramilitaries overseas eventually come back to Britain with paramilitary training.
They should never have been born in this country because their parents should never have been granted asylum here.
This is a nation, not an Airbnb with a welfare state attached
This is a nation, not an Airbnb with a welfare state attached. The entry of asylum claimants should be tightly controlled, with lengthy and intrusive vetting processes, and applicants detained offshore while that work is taking place. The criteria for refugee status should be more stringent, and if that means genuine cases get turned away, that is an unfortunate side effect of enhancing security in the asylum system. Where applicants secure refugee status then prove dangerous, disruptive or unwilling to conform to British law or custom, they should be considered for return to their country of origin, and their dependents with them. If the Refugee Convention stands in the way of refoulement, a way will have to be found around it, or the convention withdrawn from entirely. Indefinite leave to remain and citizenship should be granted less frequently and after significantly longer waiting periods. We cannot be the world’s sofa bed, there whenever anyone needs a place to crash, and asking nothing of them in return.
The Abedi family have been a pox on this country and its rightful citizens. Border policy cannot be made with just one case in mind, but we could do worse than setting a ground rule that the likes of the Abedis should be kept as far away from this country as possible.
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