Salman Abedi has been named as the bomber who blew himself up killing 22 others and injuring dozens more. What do we know about him?
Background
Salman Abedi, 22, was born in Manchester and grew up in tight-knit Libyan community that was known for its strong opposition to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. Born in 1994, the second youngest of four children, Abedi’s parents were Libyan refugees who fled to the UK to escape Gaddafi.
His mother, Samia Tabbal, 50, and father, Ramadan Abedi, a security officer, were both born in Tripoli but appear to have emigrated to London before moving to the Whalley Range area of south Manchester where they had lived for at least a decade.
Abedi went to school locally and then on to Salford University in 2014 where he studied business management before dropping out. His trips to Libya, where it is thought his parents returned in 2011 following Gaddafi’s overthrow, are now subject to scrutiny including links to jihadists.
Abedi attended the Didsbury Mosque, a well known salafi institution.
What similarities are there between him and the other Terrorists?
Abedi was a salafi, just like the London Bridge killer Khalid Masood. This is no coincidence. For those that do not know, there are different ideologies, or schools of thought within the Muslim community. It may come as a shock to learn that Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Shebab , Al Nusra, in fact all the groups you associate with terrorism are all Salafi in ideology. The problem is that many mosques in the UK and in the West are teaching the Salafi ideology.
This does not mean every person who attends a Salafi mosque is a supporter of the terrorist groups, but it does mean that those who take the Salafi ideology seriously, are at risk of joining and sympathising with these groups.