London: The Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, police believe. Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run-up to Monday’s atrocity, even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training.
Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya — where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs. It comes as Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said detectives had made “immense progress” in dismantling Abedi’s terror network. In further developments, a barber shop in Manchester was raided — with one theory being that Abedi may have obtained hydrogen peroxide, a chemical used in the hairdressing industry but which can also be used to make bombs, from the salon.
Abedi’s finances are a major “theme” of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing. One former detective said jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up”.
Abedi was given at least €7,000 (Dh28,755) from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015. It is thought he received a further pounds 7,000 in the 2016 academic year even though by then he had already dropped out of the course.
Salford University declined to say if it had informed the Student Loans Company that Abedi’s funding should have been stopped. The Department for Work and Pensions refused to say if Abedi had received any benefits, including housing benefit and income support worth up to pounds 250 a week, during 2015 and 2016. It would only say he was not claiming benefits in the weeks before the attack. Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya.
He also had sufficient funds to buy materials for his sophisticated bomb while living in a rented house in south Manchester and then rented two more properties before the attack. Abedi withdrew pounds 250 in cash three days before the attack and transferred pounds 2,500 to his younger brother Hashim in Libya. A Student Loans Company spokesman said: “It is for universities to inform the Student Loans Company when students withdraw or suspend their studies, at which point funding stops.”
A Salford University spokesman would not comment. David Videcette, a former Metropolitan police detective who worked on the 7/7 London bombing investigation, said of the student loan system: “It is an easy way for a terrorist to move forward and finance their activities at the expense of the taxpayer. All you have got to do is get yourself into university and then off you go. Often they have no intention of turning up.” Prof Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said: “The British system makes funds readily available to jihadist students without checks on them. There needs to be an inquiry.” The Government has previously admitted it has no idea how many terrorists could be using benefits and student loans to finance their activities.
