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Salman Abedi was unknown to Prevent workers, says police chief

Chief Constable Ian Hopkins in uniform during a vigil in Albert Square, Manchester.
Chief constable Ian Hopkins during a vigil in Albert Square, Manchester. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

The Manchester Arena bomber, Salman Abedi, was not known to the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme, police have said.

Speaking on BBC Radio Manchester, Ian Hopkins, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said that while Abedi was known to police for “relatively minor matters” – including theft, receiving stolen goods and minor assault in 2012 – concerns about his radicalisation had not been reported to local authorities.

“There’s been a lot of reporting and people commenting that he was reported to us on a number of occasions,” said Hopkins, answering questions from listeners on Tuesday morning.

“You will have heard us talk about the Prevent programme, which is about safeguarding and trying to deradicalise and deal with those who are at risk of being radicalised,” he said. “Abedi was not known to the Prevent programme. He was not on any sort of Prevent agenda.”

It was announced on Monday that MI5 had launched two urgent inquiries into how it missed the danger posed by Abedi, who murdered 22 people and injured dozens more when he blew himself up at the Manchester Arena. The Guardian understands that Britain’s domestic security service started one review last week, which aims to quickly identify any obvious errors, while the other will be more in depth.

Abedi had been examined by security service case officers in the past. He was one of a pool of 20,000 one-time Islamist jihadi suspects but was not one of the 3,000 people under active investigation.

“The home secretary announced yesterday that the security services are going to review what they knew as well. Obviously I am not privy to what the security service did or didn’t know about that individual at this time, but from a police perspective that’s what I knew,” said Hopkins.

The controversial Prevent programme – introduced as part of the government’s post-9/11 counter-terrorism strategy – aims to work with local organisations such as schools to identify those who have been radicalised or are in danger of being radicalised.

Speaking anonymously to the BBC, a Muslim community worker said two people who knew Abedi had warned police five years ago that he had made statements supporting terrorism and had said that “being a suicide bomber was OK”. US officials, cited by NBC News, also reportedly said Abedi’s family had warned security services that he was dangerous.

Commuters look at floral tributes placed at Manchester Victoria railway station, which reopened on Tuesday.
Commuters look at floral tributes placed at Manchester Victoria railway station, which reopened on Tuesday. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/AFP/Getty Images

There are 14 people in custody and 18 scenes still being guarded and forensically examined across Greater Manchester, as police attempt to close in on Abedi’s network. Thousands of police officers are working on the investigation into the attack, which Hopkins said had made “incredible progress”.

Counter-terrorism legislation allows suspects to be held for 14 days without charge, but police can apply for that period to be extended. “So you would be looking at a week today for the first charges to come about,” said Hopkins. He said specialist prosecution lawyers had been called in about four days ago to start building cases against some of those in custody, with a view to bringing charges in relation to the Terrorism Act and conspiracy to murder.

On Monday, detectives said they had arrested a 23-year-old man in the Sussex town of Shoreham-by-Sea. He is understood to be Ala Zakry, who runs Hasoub Alafak, a UK-registered online marketplace based in Tripoli, Libya.

Police also released CCTV footage of Abedi carrying a large blue suitcase and appealed to members of the public who might have seen the bomber to come forward. Officers were searching a landfill site in Pilsworth, near Bury, on Monday afternoon.

Manchester Victoria station – which had been closed since the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in the stadium next door on 22 May – reopened on Tuesday morning. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, were among those who laid wreaths at the station, with Burnham paying tribute to the station’s staff who rushed to help victims of the bombing.

At about 3.30pm on Tuesday residents in Springfield Street, Wigan, were evacuated from their homes. Bomb disposal experts arrived and headed towards a flat that was raided by police on Thursday. One local resident, Ian, who lives a few doors down, said: “Police knocked on the door and told me they’d ‘found something we’re not happy about’. They said I should either leave or go to the back of the house and close the blinds. I decided to stay.”

Alex Huyton, 30, and Elliot Lowe, 43, who live opposite the raided house, came back from the doctor’s to find their road blocked off. Police told them they could not return to their house. They said their wallets were inside the house so they had to wander around town for two hours before coming back to find the cordon lifted.

“They don’t tell us anything,” said Huyton of the police. “I’ve got no idea what’s going on.” Neither of them know who lives in the raided house, which has been under 24-hour surveillance by police since Thursday. “People just come and go, so you don’t get to know anybody,” said Lowe.

Daniel Piper, 29, who lives a few doors down from the raided house, said: “It’s very strange that they’ve had to evacuate the street again after being at the house for days … It’s not a very nice thing to happen, is it?”

Hopkins confirmed rumours that Grande hoped to return to Manchester to perform this weekend. He said that while some of the families of the victims were keen on the idea, others were not.

“When the idea of the concert came up, our first reaction was that we need to speak to the families of the victims and see what they feel,” he said. “It’s fair to say that the majority of them are very much in favour. There are some that clearly aren’t. That is absolutely understandable.”