WSJ REPORTS SALMAN ABEDI FOUGHT WITH HIS FATHER AGAINST GADDAFI

Salman would have been only 16.

Reasons given for radicalisation too.

In 2011, when Abedi was still a teenager, he traveled to Libya and fought alongside his father in a militia known as the Tripoli Brigade to oust Gadhafi as the revolts of the Arab Spring swept North Africa and the Middle East, a family friend said.

The militia battled in Libya’s western mountains and played an important role in the fall of Tripoli to rebel forces that year.

...“I think he saw children—Muslim children—dying everywhere, and wanted revenge. He saw the explosives America drops on children in Syria, and he wanted revenge,” she said. “Whether he got that is between him and God.”

In May 2016, an 18-year-old friend of Salman Abedi’s, Abdul Wahab Hafidah, a Briton of Libyan descent, died after being run down by a car and then stabbed in Manchester. Six men and a 15-year-old boy are on trial in a Manchester court this month charged with murder in connection with the killing, which prosecutors have argued was gang-related. The defendants deny wrongdoing.

Abedi viewed the attack as a hate crime, the family friend said, and grew increasingly angry about what he considered ill-treatment of Muslims in Britain. “I remember Salman at his funeral vowing revenge,” the Abedi family friend said.

Abedi became increasingly religious, family members said, and interested in extremist groups. A cousin, who declined to be named, said Abedi’s parents worried he was headed toward violence.

“We knew he was going to cause trouble,” the family friend said. “You could see that something was going to happen, sooner or later.”

...Abedi’s younger brother, Hashem, detained in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Wednesday, confessed that the pair were members of Islamic State and involved in the attack, according to local Libyan security officials.

...It was impossible to independently confirm the Libyan authorities’ assertion about Hashem Abedi’s confession, or to ascertain the conditions under which it was made. Libyan militias routinely resort to harsh tactics to get information from terrorism suspects. A U.K. government spokesman declined to comment.

[source : Manchester Bomber Believed Muslims Were Mistreated, Sought Revenge, WSJ, https://www.wsj.com/articles/manchester-bomber-fought-in-libya-1495662073, 24th May 2017]