U.K. agency missed chance to stop attack at Ariana Grande’s Manchester concert: report

A knapsack bomb left in the foyer at Manchester Arena at the end of the 2017 concert killed 22 people, including children, as they left the pop star's show.

Britain’s domestic intelligence agency didn’t act swiftly enough on key information and missed a significant opportunity to prevent the suicide bombing that killed 22 people at a 2017 Ariana Grande concert in northwest England, an inquiry found Thursday.

Retired judge John Saunders, who led the inquiry into the Manchester Arena attack, said that one MI5 officer admitted they considered intelligence about suicide bomber Salman Abedi to be a possible national security concern, but didn’t discuss it with colleagues quickly enough.

“I have found a significant missed opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack,” he said.

Abedi, 22, set off a knapsack bomb in the arena’s foyer at the end of the May 22, 2017 concert, as thousands of young fans, including children, were leaving the pop star’s show. Abedi died in the explosion.

His brother, Hashem Abedi, was convicted in 2020 of helping to plan and carry out the attack. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Saunders said had the MI5 acted on the intelligence it received, it could have led to Abedi being stopped at Manchester Airport on his return from Libya just four days before the attack.

Richard Scorer, a lawyer representing 11 of the bereaved families, said the report was a “devastating conclusion for us.”

“It is now very clear that there was a failure to properly assess key intelligence about Salman Abedi; a failure to put it into proper context, and _ most catastrophic of all _ a delay in acting on it,” Scorer said. “The failures exposed in this report are unacceptable.”