Mosque leaders' 'wilful blindness' over radical views

BUT PLACE OF WORSHIP WAS NOT 'ACTIVE FACTOR OR CAUSE'

- JOHN SCHEERHOUT

THE LEADERS of a mosque attended by Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi were guilty of ‘wilful blindness’ to highly charged political debate about the conflict raging in Libya before the atrocity, the public inquiry into the atrocity has found.

But Didsbury Mosque was not an ‘active factor or cause’ in the radicalisation of suicide bomber Salman Abedi and his accomplice brother Hashem.

The south Manchester mosque was heavily criticised in the third and final report of the public inquiry into the atrocity, which examined the radicalisation of the bomber, although it was not an ‘active factor’ in that radicalisation.

Suicide bomber Salman Abedi and his jailed brother, Hashem Abedi, attended the mosque on Burton Road in west Didsbury as youngsters and their father, Ramadan Abedi, performed the call to prayer. Ismail Abedi, the elder brother, volunteered in the mosque’s Arabic school – and their mother taught there briefly.

Inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders praised the ‘generally truthful and reliable’ evidence of a liberal imam at the mosque, Mohammed El-Saeiti, who said in his evidence he was ostracised at the mosque after speaking out against radical Islam.