Families of the victims of the Manchester bombing may have to wait another month before they can bury their loved ones, due to delays in formal identification and postmortems.
A Greater Manchester police spokesperson said on Wednesday that formal identification of all 22 victims of the attack on Manchester Arena on 22 May had not yet been completed.
Dan Hett, whose 29-year-old brother Martyn was killed in the attack, said he and his family thought they would be unable to bury him until the end of June.
“They were quite clear this would be a long process from the start, so although it’s difficult we do understand the complexity of the process,” he said.
A spokesman from HM coroners office, Manchester city area, said: “The investigation is still very much in its infancy. Only once the formal identification process has been completed, and in consultation with the bereaved families, will the opening of the inquests be announced.”
On Tuesday night, police said they now believed that Salman Abedi, who blew himself up at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, had acted largely alone in the run-up to the attack. They had previously said they were investigating a potential terror “network” in the city.
Abedi’s body is reportedly being kept in a morgue somewhere outside Manchester, with the city’s authorities telling the Manchester Evening News that they were doing “everything in their power” to ensure he was not cremated or buried in the Greater Manchester area.
A spokesman for Manchester Central Mosque, one of the city’s biggest Muslim funeral providers, said the organisation would have nothing to do with the bomber’s body, as the atrocity he committed was against Islam.
Abedi’s body is thought to be with the coroner and it has been suggested that his remains could be sent to Libya, where his parents live.
Police have so far arrested 16 people as part of the investigation and 10 people are still in custody. On Wednesday night police said a 21-year-old man, who was arrested in Nuneaton last Wednesday, had been released without charge.
Three men also were released without charge on Tuesday: two men aged 20 and 24 from the Fallowfield area of south Manchester, believed to be Abedi’s cousins, and a 37-year-old man from Blackley in north Manchester.
The Blackley man is believed to be Aimen Elwafi. The house of his best friend was allegedly attacked on Friday, after neighbours saw journalists outside.
On Wednesday, Mohamed Elhudarey’s house had boarded up windows and a neighbour said young men from the estate had attacked the property with bricks. Elhudarey’s children are thought to have been in the house when it was attacked.
Elhudarey had told journalists on Friday that his friend had gone to the police willingly to help with inquiries when he realised that he had rented his flat to Abedi. Police subsequently raided Elwafi’s flat in Blackley and arrested him.
As part of the investigation, police launched a renewed search of a house in Rusholme on Wednesday afternoon, warning neighbours that they might have to evacuate their homes.
The house had been searched by police on Monday and three Malaysian students were detained for questioning before being promptly released.
Nearby residents, many of whom are students, said police had come knocking on their doors on Tuesday night asking if they had ever seen Salman Abedi on the road and asking if they knew anything about a fridge, which had been left at the back of the raided house.
The road was blocked off from around 12.30pm for about two hours, while police conducted their search.
