Mosque hits back at Arena bomb inquiry criticism

LEADERS DENY THEY WERE 'WILFULLY BLIND' TO DEBATE ABOUT CONFLICT IN LIBYA BEFORE TERROR ATROCITY

- DAMON WILKINSON

LEADERS at Didsbury mosque have responded to criticism they faced in the Manchester Arena bombing public inquiry, denying they showed ‘wilful blindness’ to highly-charged political debate about conflict in Libya before the atrocity.

The south Manchester mosque was heavily criticised in the third and final report of the public inquiry into the attack.

Elders were accused of weak leadership and were found to have not paid sufficient attention to what went on at the mosque. There were no policies in place that were ‘robust enough to prevent the politicisation of its premises’, inquiry chair Sir John Saunders said.

Chair of trustees Fawzi Haffar was also criticised for giving ‘unreliable’ evidence in saying the mosque had ‘no ties to Libya’ and no knowledge anyone from the mosque had gone to Libya. He was also accused of ‘downplaying’ the links to the mosque of the family of suicide bomber Salman Abedi.

Abedi, who murdered 22 people on May 2017, and his jailed brother, Hashem Abedi, attended the mosque on Burton Road in West Didsbury as youngsters while 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. In a statement yesterday the mosque said it ‘does not agree’ with the assertion that it leaders had been ‘wilfully blind’.