Inquiry Details 9 Missed Opportunities to Thwart British Concert Bombing

Families of the 22 people who died in the 2017 terrorist bombing of a concert at Britain’s Manchester Arena are urging authorities to mount corporate manslaughter prosecutions against the firm responsible for security on the night of the attack and the company that runs the arena.   

Their demand came Thursday in the wake of the release of a damning official report into the terror attack that detailed nine missed opportunities to thwart the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert by 22-year-old Salman Abedi, a British-Libyan citizen.  The report by John Saunders, a former High Court judge, who has led a months-long inquiry into Abedi’s suicide bombing, which also left hundreds injured, found there were grave “systemic failures” ahead of the attack on May 22, 2017. “Everybody concerned with security at the arena should have been doing their job in the knowledge that a terrorist attack might occur on that night. They weren’t,” Saunders said in the report. Abedi, an Islamic State-inspired attacker, should have been identified as a threat on the night of the attack, and if he had been, it is “highly likely” more lives could have been saved, the inquiry found. Saunders concluded “more should have been done” by police and security before Abedi detonated his homemade device.