The brother of the Manchester Arena bomber set up an email address with the Arabic words for “We have come to slaughter” to buy bomb-making chemicals, his trial has heard.
The email address provided to Amazon for the purchase of 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide was linked to Hashem Abedi, the Old Bailey was told.
Abedi, 22, is accused of helping to plan the May 2017 attack and helping to build the suicide bomb that his brother, Salman, detonated at the end of an Ariana Grande concert. He denies the murder of 22 people aged between eight and 51, as well as attempted murder and conspiring with his brother to cause explosions.
The jury was shown chilling CCTV footage of Salman’s movements as he rented a flat in the city centre, dragged bomb-making equipment into the flat in a large blue suitcase, bought shrapnel for the bomb, and carried out a reconnaissance mission to the Manchester Arena before finally detonating the bomb at just after 10.30pm on 22 May 2017.
Duncan Penny QC, prosecuting, said the email was created to buy hydrogen peroxide, a key ingredient for the bomb, on 20 March 2017.
At the same time, the siblings were using a network of unsuspecting family and friends in the Libyan community to buy other ingredients, including large amounts of sulphuric acid, the court heard.
Within an hour of Abedi allegedly failing to purchase 10 litres of sulphuric acid using a friend’s details, his mobile phone and car data were pinpointed in the vicinity of Hulme market, in the south of the city, Penny said. Minutes later the email account was created via publicly available wifi.
“Much later, on 3 April 2017, this email address was provided to Amazon for the purchase of 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide,” the prosecutor said.
After the bombing, when the brothers’ family home was raided by police, they found the email address handwritten on torn-up pieces of paper in a bin outside, the court heard.
Penny said the email was used to make two purchases of hydrogen peroxide, one two days after the email was created and another 13 days later. Both orders were delivered to an empty terraced house belonging to a Libyan acquaintance of the siblings in Rusholme.
The court heard that the brothers asked a network of acquaintances, mainly friends and cousins, to purchase two chemicals needed for the production of the homemade explosives. Some friends declined, but others, who believed their cover story that they needed the chemicals for a battery at their parents’ home in Libya, agreed.
However, a month before the attack, the brothers, by now having built up a stockpile of chemicals at two addresses in south Manchester, would be forced to hurriedly move the bomb-making ingredients, the court heard
On 6 April 2017 the siblings’ parents, Ramadan and Samia, arrived in the UK for a brief visit and the pair were told they would be returning to Libya on one-way tickets in a matter of days on plane tickets bought by their older brother, Ismail.
Given their impending departure and fearing that their plans were about to be foiled, the brothers could no longer use various addresses to store the materials for their explosives, the court heard.
“They needed to remove the materials quickly to a safe location, where they could be stored unobtrusively without drawing too much attention to themselves and before they were obliged to return to Libya with their parents,” said Penny.
Just 48 hours before their departure, they made a late-night purchase of a white Nissan Micra. The car was subsequently parked at a car park near the siblings’ home, and the pair transferred chemicals and shrapnel to the car. Just hours later, the pair departed for Libya with their parents, the court heard.
The brothers took the precaution of leaving one of the addresses – Somerton Court – by separate means of transport and with “no small degree of subterfuge”, Penny said.
“The last thing they would have wanted would be for the two of them to be stopped together in the early hours of the morning in the Micra, an uninsured vehicle, which just happened to be full of bomb-making equipment. One way or another, they needed to reduce the risk of the entire operation being compromised.”
On his return from Libya, all Salman needed to do was collect what he needed from the Micra … source some parts necessary to make the bomb viable, and find somewhere suitable both to construct it and to detonate it,” said Penny.
Abedi denies the charges. The trial continues.
