themanchestereveningnews--2020-08-20--Hashem Abedi: All the evidence in the Manchester Arena trial, day by day

Hashem Abedi 's trial was one which many feared would never happen .
The terrorist was in Libya at the time his brother Salman Abedi detonated a bomb at Manchester Arena , killing 22 people and himself , while injuring hundreds of others .
Following the May 22 , 2017 , attack , Hashem was detained in Libya .
The north African country has been wracked by conflict and instability since dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi regime ended , after over 40 years , with a 2011 uprising .
But , despite the challenges posed by the situation in Libya , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did succeed in bringing Hashem back from Tripoli to face justice , and within months he was on trial at the Old Bailey in London .
Manchester Evening News crime reporter John Scheerhout was there for every day of the trial , and now , for the first time , recounts how it unfolded , day-by-day , until a mass murderer was finally convicted .
The trial , which had been due to start three months earlier , finally started at the Old Bailey .
Behind the scenes it had been beset by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ original QC and threatened to represent himself unless he got the replacement he wanted .
Reluctantly , the judge consented .
The rescheduled start was January 27 .
But Abedi ’ s legal team spent the first week trying - and ultimately failing - to get all the charges thrown out on the grounds Hashem Abedi ’ s extradition had been ‘ illegal ’ and , they argued , the UK authorities knew it .
The delay meant the start of the Arena public inquiry was also put back and friends and family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When the trial eventually got underway , watching from the public gallery - just a few feet away from the defendant - was Lisa Rutherford , whose daughter Chloe was killed in the blast , as was Chloe ’ s partner Liam Curry .
A lot of families - both in the public gallery of court 2 at the Old Bailey , and at remote courtrooms in Manchester , Leeds , Newcastle and Glasgow to which the proceedings were beamed - wanted to look Hashem Abedi in the eye , although it will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shocking details outlined by prosecutor Duncan Penny QC , over the following three days of his opening address .
Hashem Ramadan Abedi , 22 , helped make the devastating improvised device which claimed the lives of 22 people and was ‘ just as guilty ’ of the atrocity as his older brother Salman , the jury was told , when the trial eventually got underway at last in court 2 .
He bought screws and nails to use as shrapnel and also purchased two of the three ‘ precursor chemicals ’ required to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bombing .
The jury were told his brother Salman was ‘ in the midst ’ of those departing the venue , and killed himself and 22 others when he detonated a bomb in his backpack in the foyer as concert-goers were leaving an Ariana Grande gig at Manchester Arena .
`` The effects of the resulting explosion were both sudden and lethal , '' Mr Penny said Some 22 people were killed , including ‘ men , women , teenagers and a child ’ and another 63 were ‘ seriously injured ’ .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 237 others were hurt .
Some 670 people reported ‘ psychological trauma ’ while police had identified nearly 1000 victims , he told the jury .
Mr Penny said : “ The prosecution case is that this defendant is just as guilty of the murder of the 22 people killed as was his brother .
He is equally guilty of the attempted murder of many others and in doing so he was guilty of agreeing with his brother to cause an explosion or explosions of a nature likely to endanger life .
Those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respect of which he is now in your charge .
“ In acting as he did the Crown allege that this defendant assisted and encouraged his brother to act as his brother did intending to assist and encourage , ” he said .
He intended ‘ to kill and main and to injure as many people as possible ’ .
The QC said the defendant , with his brother , obtained ‘ precursor chemicals ’ for use in a bomb - sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide - and ‘ experimented with metal containers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used a Nissan Micra to store bomb-making items and a Toyota Aygo for their plot and had addresses at Granby Row , in the centre of Manchester , where Salman Abedi assembled the device , and a flat on the 12th floor of Somerton Court , from where the bomb could be ‘ manufactured and stored ’ , the court heard .
They bought ‘ screws and nails ’ to act as shrapnel to maximise harm to their victims , according to the Crown .
The QC went on : “ This explosion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , experimentation and preparation by the two of them .
“ The defendant , through his conduct encouraged and assisted his brother Salman to carry out this attack .
The bomb which was detonated was self-evidently designed to kill and maim as many people as possible .
It was packed with lethal shrapnel and it was detonated in the middle of a crown in a very public area - the intention being to kill and inflict maximum damage , ” he said .
The QC went on : “ At 22.31 he detonated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he killed 22 members of the public and injured many more who were in the immediate vicinity , some of them very seriously indeed.
” Salman Abedi ’ s body was ‘ dismembered ’ in the blast , the court was told .
Before the jury was brought in , Hashem Abedi ’ s QC mentioned his client was feeling unwell .
He had a hernia related to a kidney problem , according to the QC .
It would n't be his last moan , during a trial he appeared to disdain .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecutor resumed his opening address ( concentrating on Hashem Abedi ’ s efforts to source chemicals for the bomb in the months preceding the attack ) .
But , about an hour into the morning session , the jurors were sent out for a break .
When they came back , they saw the defendant wasn ’ t in the dock - the judge informed them Abedi had been feeling unwell before they started but had begun to feel worse .
He was in pain , they were told .
The jurors were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in the absence of the jury , Abedi ’ s QC told the judge his client was allergic to tap water/chlorinated water and was now ‘ suffering from dehydration ’ .
The judge asked the court security officials to make sure there was bottled water available for the defendant , telling them : “ It ’ s essential this does not happen again.
” Hashem Abedi , who had remained down in the court cells while all this was discussed , wasn ’ t so unwell he needed to go to hospital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prison .
An email address in Arabic which translates as ‘ we have come to slaughter ’ was found in a bin at the Abedi family home during the investigation which followed the explosion , the jurors were told when the prosecutor resumed his opening address .
Hashem Abedi , who worked as a delivery driver at the Golden Tandoori in Manchester city centre , and his brother Salman , were said to have used the addresses and email accounts of associates to source 16 litres of sulphuric acid and 55 litres hydrogen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ produced at 12th floor flat at Somerton Court in Blackley before Salman Abedi assembled the IED , packed with screws and nuts to act as shrapnel , at an apartment at Granby Row in central Manchester , according to the prosecution .
The jurors were told that one email account - ‘ bedab7jeana @ gmail.com ’ - was set up at 3.03pm on March 20 , 2017 .
It was created via free public wifi at Hulme Market in south Manchester , the court was told .
Duncan Penny QC , prosecuting , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ address was created the data for a number attributed to Hashem Abedi suggested the phone was in the vicinity of the market at the time .
Some ten minutes after the account was created , a Toyota Aygo , purchased by Hashem Abedi in January 2017 , was captured on Princess Parkway by ANPR cameras close to Hulme Market , the court heard .
Mr Penny told the jury that later , when the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfield was searched following the bomb , the same email address was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a bin at the property .
The jurors were shown an image of the paper which had been put back together so they could see the hand-written email address in full .
The QC said the ‘ literal translation ’ of ‘ bedab7jeana ’ is ‘ to slaughter we have come ’ or ‘ we have come to slaughter ’ .
Some 13 days later this email address was provided to Amazon for the purchase of 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide , the court heard .
A third brother , Ismail Abedi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tickets for flights from Manchester to Libya via Amsterdam and Istanbul for travel on April 15 , flying on the same planes as their parents .
Their imminent departure meant they could no longer use the flat at Somerton Court , nor an unoccupied terraced house at Lindum Street in Rusholme , to which they were getting chemicals delivered , the jury heard .
So they are said to have purchased a Nissan Micra from a vendor in Droylsden for £230 in which , according to the Crown , they stored bomb-making equipment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of flats at Devell House in Rusholme before their flights to Libya .
Salman Abedi flew back to Manchester on May 17 , checked the Nissan was where it had been parked and then rented the apartment in Granby Row where he assembled the IED , said the prosecution .
The next day he walked to the Arena and CCTV images shown to the jurors revealed him walking along Chapel Street , and then along the foot of the steps up the venue itself and then in the City Room inside the premises @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to detonate the bomb five days later .
One image showed him walking by a queue of people at a ticket kiosk .
Hashem Abedi denied involvement in the attack following his arrest and told police he would have tried to stop it by telling his mother .
He claimed he wasn ’ t a member of terror group ISIS or an extremist and was ‘ shocked ’ when he learned about the bombing in which 22 people were killed and hundreds of others were hurt , the court heard .
The former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea what his older brother Salman was planning and would have tried to stop his sibling had he known .
Salman Abedi detonated a bomb in his backpack , said to be stuffed with about 3,000 pieces of shrapnel in the form of nuts weighing 30 kilos , at the end of the concert .
The jurors heard Hashem said nothing when he was arrested and charged following his return from Libya in 2019 , two years after the bombing .
The court heard he declined to answer questions when he was interviewed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which he denied any involvement in the bombing .
The court heard that the former Burnage High School pupil said in his statement : “ I was not involved in the instigation preparation or commission of it .
`` The first I heard of it was on the 23 May , a few hours before I was arrested by the FTS in Libya .
Had I had any idea of it I would have reported it to my mother initially and then to other family members to prevent it from happening .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ this and felt bad for everybody .
“ I could never have envisaged that my brother had it in him to do this to innocent people .
“ I am a practising Muslim .
I do not hold extremist views .
I do not delve too deep into anything other than I pray and read Koran .
I have no interest in Daesh and have no sympathy or support for their ideology and extremism .
I did attend the mosque from time to time and wear traditional clothing at the time of visiting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support of ISIS but to practice my religion .
I am not a member of ISIS nor do I subscribe to their way of thinking or ideology.
” The jurors were shown a series of CCTV images showing Salman Abedi at the Arena on May 22 , 2017 , after traveling there by tram and after assembling the kilo device at a flat in Granby Row in central Manchester .
Shortly before the prosecution brought an end to the opening address , an image timed at 10.30pm showed Salman Abedi surrounded by people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15 seconds before he detonated the IED in his backpack .
Salman Abedi visited a convicted terrorist in prison four months before he carried out the attack , the jurors heard .
He visited Abdalraouf Abdallah , who was a year into his nine-and-a-half year sentence for terror crimes , at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool in January 2017 .
Abdallah , from Manchester , went to Libya to fight the Gaddafi regime but was left paraplegic after being shot in the back .
He was later locked up for helping fighters join Islamic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Abedi booked to visit Abdalraouf Abdallah at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool on January 17 , 2017 , but actually saw the inmate at the jail the following day .
The jurors were told Abdalraouf Abdallah travelled to Libya in 2011 and suffered a gunshot wound to his back whilst taking part in ‘ fighting against the Gaddafi regime during the Libyan Revolution ’ .
It left him paraplegic and in a wheelchair , the court was told .
He was convicted of a terror offence in May 2016 , namely that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by sending £2,000 to his brother , the court heard .
Abdalraouf Abdallah also ‘ organised the terrorist activities of a group in Manchester ’ by assisting two men to try to enter Syria via Turkey where the plan was for them to join his brother Mohammad Abdallah to ‘ engage in fighting ’ , the jurors were told .
One of the men he assisted was said to have become an ‘ Islamic State fighter ’ and the obtaining of weapons was discussed , according to the ‘ agreed fact ’ put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ handed an extended sentence of nine-and-a-half years including a five-a-half-year custodial term and was detained at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool from December 6 , 2016 .
The court was told that Salman Abedi and another man booked a ‘ social visit ’ to Abdalraouf Abdallah at the prison on 17 January 2017 but they did not attend .
On the following day , January 18 , 2017 , Salman Abedi and two other men visited Abdalraouf Abdallah between 5.59pm and 7.10pm , the jurors were told .
Salman Abedi also booked to visit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other men , but while they did attend , Salman did not on that occasion , the court heard .
Hashem Abedi hoarded old tins from a takeaway where he worked to make parts for a prototype IED , his murder trial was told .
He worked as a £5-an-hour delivery driver for a takeaway in Greater Manchester from where he collected retail-sized tins of sauce and vegetable oil as well as kebab skewers , a court heard .
He said he wanted to sell the metal for scrap but the prosecution say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prototype bomb .
The jurors were read a statement from a witness , who can not be named for legal reasons , who owned the takeaway in Greater Manchester where Hashem Abedi worked and from where he is said to have collected old tins .
The takeaway owner said Hashem Abedi , who was said to have smoked cannabis and taken ecstasy , could not be relied on to turn up for his shift as a £5-a-hour delivery driver and would pocket change due to the customers for himself .
“ In my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Islam , ” he said .
The witness said that Hashem Abedi had asked him if he could take old tins of from the takeaway for scrap and he said he agreed as it meant he would have ‘ less rubbish in the shop ’ .
Hashem Abedi also took tins from another premises next door but did not ask permission , the jurors were told .
Other staff at his takeaway reported that Hashem Abedi ’ s front garden looked like a takeaway shop because of all the tins there , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from another witness , who also can not be named for legal reasons , who described how the defendant took tramadol and MDMA ( ecstasy ) .
He agreed the defendant ’ s ‘ speciality ’ was an ‘ extra large spliff ’ .
The witness agreed the defendant was scared of his ‘ big brother ’ Salman and never wanted him to know he smoked weed or did ‘ anything naughty ’ .
He said Salman Abedi ‘ complained about his brother ' including that he wasn ’ t going to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described , in his police statement , Hashem Abedi as ‘ clumsy , a little stupid and goofy ’ .
The start of proceedings was delayed and Hashem Abedi 's QC said he was late arriving from prison that morning as there had been ‘ trouble in the cells ’ .
When the jurors were brought into court , they heard evidence that Salman Abedi led a ‘ gangster lifestyle ’ during his teen years but was confronted by the mother of one of his friends because of ‘ too strong ’ religious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were read a statement from a witness , not named for legal reasons , who knew Salman and Hashem Abedi .
He said Salman Abedi , in his teenage years , ‘ used to smoke cannabis and would be violent and got into fights , kind of like a little bit of a gangster lifestyle ’ .
However , he added that as he got older Salman Abedi ‘ became happier , more knowledgeable and he was always smiling ’ .
The witness said Salman Abedi ‘ started becoming more religious ’ in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s view was that Salman Abedi ’ s religious views were ‘ too strong and she told us not to listen to him ’ .
“ My mum would would often confront Salman about his religious views and this sometimes resulted in conflict , ” he said .
The witness said he recalled that around March 8 , 2017 , Salman Abedi asked if he could help him out by transferring money to a company in China to ‘ help a guy who ’ s trying to buy some doors ’ .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be unable to make the transfer himself , according to the witness , who went on that he thought Salman Abedi did not have a bank account .
He said Salman Abedi arrived at his house in a grey Toyota Yaris which Hashem Abedi had driven .
The witness said he was driven to a branch of Halifax in Chorlton and they parked up in a Morrisons car park .
He said he went into the bank with Salman Abedi and sent the money to China and that Salman Abedi gave him £1,200 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The witness said that at the time he had ‘ no concerns ’ about this transfer .
The witness described how Hashem Abedi came to his house on March 2 .
2017 , and asked if he had an Amazon account .
He told the defendant he did and agreed to pay £69.36 for sulphuric acid - which the Crown said was one of the ‘ precursor chemicals ’ required to make TATP - from a supplier in Italy .
Hashem Abedi told him it was for a car , the jurors were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he didn ’ t know about cars or how they work .
While they were on a sofa , they searched for the item and purchased it , he said , adding that Hashem Abedi paid him back in cash .
“ I didn ’ t think it was out of the ordinary and I hardly gave it another thought , ” he said .
The witness described how the package was delivered and that he had been told that Salman Abedi collected it .
He went on that he was aware @ @ @ @ @ @ @ views ’ although he had not tried to ‘ impress ’ his views on him .
The witness went on that his mother thought ‘ his interpretation of Islam was too strict ’ and that ‘ we should not listen to him ’ .
The witness said Salman and Hashem Abedi visited his home on April 6 , 2017 , and that was the last time he saw them .
The brothers said that they were travelling to Libya and that they ‘ did not plan to return ’ , the court heard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hashem Abedi against a ‘ dodgy ’ agreement to buy chemicals because they can be used to make explosives , the trial was told .
A friend of the accused , who can not be named for legal reasons , told the jury Hashem Abedi called him three months before the blast with a ‘ bulls**t story ’ that he needed battery acid for a generator at the family home in Libya .
When the witness told his father , the jurors were told the father said such acid can be used to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is dodgy , do not buy this online.
” The friend described how Hashem Abedi took drugs and loved to party in Amsterdam , London , Manchester and even at a beach house near Tripoli .
The witness said Hashem Abedi ‘ took drugs because he knew what his brother was going to do ’ , and he described how the defendant asked him to purchase sulphuric acid three months before the bombing .
The defendant called him and asked ‘ can you help me ?
’ before sending him a link on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acid listing on Amazon .
The witness said he had no money and he ‘ didn ’ t want to let him down ’ and so asked his father to pay for the purchase instead .
He told the jury his father said sulphuric acid can be used to make explosives and he was said to have told his son : “ This is dodgy , do not buy this online.
” The witness said he ignored a series of subsequent calls from Hashem Abedi and had not spoken to him since .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ defending , the witness described how he noted that Hashem Abedi started ‘ taking more drugs ’ , and how they had partied in Manchester , London , Amsterdam and at a beach house near Tripoli in Libya .
Pressed further on Hashem Abedi ’ s drug taking , the witness said : “ I think he was taking drugs because he knew what his brother was going to do.
” The jurors were told that , at one party on Wilmslow Road in Manchester , Salman Abedi confronted brother Hashem as he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The witness said Salman Abedi was ‘ shouting and being aggressive in front of all these guys ’ .
The witness described an incident in Libya when he and Hashem ‘ had to hide ’ from Salman Abedi as the latter considered him a ‘ bad influence ’ .
The witness agreed with the QC that , when the brothers came back from Libya , they had become ‘ more religious ’ .
They encouraged him to pray but they never discussed religion or extremism , he said .
The witness said he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ January 2016 until he saw him at a party in Amsterdam in October that year when , he agreed with Mr Kamlish , the defendant ‘ became his old self again ’ by taking drugs .
The witness described another occasion when he said he went to a mosque with Hashem Abedi where there were lots of Libyans and that they saw Salman Abedi sitting alone in the front row .
The jurors were told that Salman Abedi stood and took over the prayers when the imam started to stutter .
The witness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been ‘ a bit cheeky ’ .
Salman and Hashem Abedi fled the scene of a crash two months before the attack and branded one eye-witness ‘ pussy ’ for calling police , the jury heard .
The brothers ran away after crashing their silver Toyota Aygo into another car in Fallowfield on March 23 , 2017 , and failed to tend to the ‘ traumatised and crying ’ woman driving the other car , according to an eye-witness .
They were seen trying to repair the vehicle and ripping labels from cardboard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before verbally abusing a pedestrian witness for calling police before running away in opposite directions , a jury at the Old Bailey in London was told .
The prosecution say the brothers were using the car as part of efforts to source ‘ precursor chemicals ’ used in the manufacture of the deadly TATP explosive used in the attack , but their plans were ‘ thrown somewhat into disarray ’ because of the crash .
A witness to the crash told the jurors he was walking along Wellington Road when he saw the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ West in Fallowfield on the afternoon of March 23 , 2017 .
The silver Toyota Aygo in which the brothers were said to travelling suffered significant damage to its front when it hit another car , sending the car spinning into a wall , the court heard .
The woman driver of the other car was left ‘ traumatised and crying ’ but the occupants of the Aygo were more concerned about the cardboard boxes in the rear and trying to repair their vehicle so they could drive away , the court was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was shocked that ‘ no-one from the other car came over to see if she was OK ’ .
The witness said he went to see if there was a response from the two men .
“ As I walking over there were two males looking at the car trying to repair and trying to move it , trying to drive off , ” the witness said .
The bumper had come off the front of the car and the males were trying to put it back on and ‘ get the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He said : “ One of them I pretty much came face to face with .
I was on the phone to the police telling them about the incident .
I had to get the car registration of the car that was involved .
“ As I was walking over the two males , one of them approached me .
He knew I was on the phone to the police and he called me a pussy.
” The jurors are told that at the time the witness gave police descriptions of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle eastern appearance with a light skin colour , aged about 20 and 6ft 1in tall , and he was wearing a navy hat with a multi-coloured bobble , a navy jacket and jogging bottoms ; the passenger was a male with light brown skin , aged about 20 , 5ft 11in , slim with short dark brown hair and he was wearing a tracksuit and flip flops .
Asked what he thought of the ‘ pussy ’ jibe , he said : “ I was kind of shocked .
Obviously I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As soon as he said that to me , they both went off in different directions.
” The witness said there were four or five brown cardboard boxes on the back seat of their damaged car and the pair were ‘ tampering with them - ripping labels off ’ .
Asked by the prosecutor what happened when the men ‘ split ’ , he said ‘ the one with the sliders ’ went up Wellington Road and the other went south along Wellington Road behind the library .
He said he had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sliders .
Asked why he thought he had been abused , the witness said : “ Just because I was on the phone reporting it.
” Under cross-examination by Stephen Kamlish QC , defending Hashem Abedi , he said he could not recall whether the man had tried to remove the bumper .
The witness said he remembered the bumper ripped off and the males were trying to drive away .
The QC suggested the boxes were in the rear of the car and not on the back seat , and Mr Cooper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the back ’ .
“ I noticed them doing something to the boxes , ” he said .
The jurors also heard from the witnesses then partner , who also saw the crash .
She told the jury : “ We were walking from Withington and walking down the road and saw a car which was meant to stop but didn ’ t .
It hit another car and the lady in the car span around .
“ It was quite a big collision .
It all happened really quickly.
” She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shocked ’ and she ran over to see if the lady was OK. She said she saw another car and two males .
She told the jury that when they were calling the police one of the males said ‘ no , no ’ and called her partner ‘ pussy ’ .
“ It was strange in a way because you would think they would ask if the lady was OK , but they didn ’ t .
They just stayed in the car , ” she said .
She said she saw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the males were ‘ taking things off them ’ .
The boxes were in the boot of the car and the boot was open while this happened , she said .
She said that after her partner had been abused there had been no more conversation with the males .
She said she wasn ’ t sure which one had abused her partner but she said the taller one with the greyer skin was the driver and he also had a thin moustache .
One of the males ran towards Withington while the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was ‘ quite damaged ’ and he ‘ tried to put the car back together a little bit and drive off ’ .
But the male who remained didn ’ t manage to drive off and ran off in the opposite direction , she told the jury .
“ None of them spoke to the lady to see if she ’ s OK and that ’ s what stuck with us , ” she said .
Police arrived at the scene of the crash and the Aygo was later removed to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Behind the scenes and away from the jury , Hashem Abedi complained to his QC about the length of the court day , saying he had hardly slept .
In court , the jurors heard details about how Hashem and Salman Abedi used an empty terraced house in Rusholme as a delivery address for chemicals to make explosives , having duped contacts into ordering sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide .
The jurors were reminded that , after the brothers had crashed the Toyota Aygo on March 23 , 2017 , two months before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purchased for £290 at an auction the following day .
The jurors were told the accused and his brother used the Aygo and the replacement vehicle to move chemicals to a 12th floor flat at Somerton Court in Blackley where , according to the prosecution , TATP was manufactured .
The jurors were told that the first of two parcels containing 20 litres of hydrogen peroxide was delivered to an address at Lindum Street in Rusholme on March 27 , 2017 , and signed for by ‘ YAYA ’ .
Later a phone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attributed to a contact which read : “ Alsalam send me online dets so he can drop doe asap ’ .
The second part of the hydrogen peroxide order was delivered to the address on March 31 , the court heard .
The jurors were read a witness statement from one resident of the street , Linda Travis , who described young men coming to the property with suitcases being brought in and out .
Ms Travis said she had accepted deliveries which were addressed to the property when no-one was there , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her sofa for a few days and then delivered it to an Asian male who turned up at the property .
The male did not speak and simply took the parcel from her , she said .
The man at the address must have had a shower as he was still wet , she said .
An email address ‘ bedab7jeana @ gmail.com ’ - created via free public WiFi at Hulme Market - was used to set up an Amazon account which was used to order 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lindum Street property on April 6 , 2017 , the jurors were told .
Earlier in the trial , the prosecution said ‘ bedab7jeana ’ translates from Arabic to ‘ to slaughter we have come ’ or ‘ we have come to slaughter ’ .
Within ten minutes of the Amazon account being set up , it was used to purchase 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide for £92.47 with a customer name of ‘ John O ’ Brian ’ .
The trial was adjourned early for the day when one of the jurors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s QC Stephen Kamlish said client had struggled to sleep and cope with the length of the court day .
In the dock , he showed no sign of being weary , but his barrister said he was struggling to concentrate , 'stressed for obvious reasons ' , and asked if the court could sit for ‘ shorter days ’ .
The judge , Mr Justice Jeremy Baker , acknowledged the request but made no concessions .
He stood and left court , appearing to have put the defendant and his request in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no sign of fatigue in the dock , Abedi ’ s QC again complained the defendant was finding it ‘ exceedingly difficult ’ to follow the proceedings before the jurors were brought into court .
Abedi woke at 5am and was ‘ fed briefly ’ in his cell before beginning the process all Category A prisoners at HMP Belmarsh go through before they are brought to court , his lawyer said .
He was getting tired and was ‘ flagging ’ towards the end of a day of court , said Mr Kamlish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have shorter days .
The judge simply noted that the defendant was experiencing a typical working day .
The families and police officers watching the proceedings - among them Chief Constable Ian Hopkins - can ’ t have been impressed .
Again , the judge appeared to reject the request and called the jurors in to continue the trial proper .
The jurors , when they were brought into court , were told about the movements of the accused and his brother as they attempted to source chemicals for their bomb in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Morwenna Cross , giving evidence for the prosecution , described the movements of phones attributed to Salman Abedi and his brother Hashem .
She told the jurors about the movements of phones across Greater Manchester as well as the movements of a Toyota Aygo and later a Hyundai Sonata said to have been used to ferry chemicals to and from the 12th floor apartment in Blackley where TATP ( triacetone triperoxide ) was made between February and April 2017 .
Ms Cross took the jurors through the movements of mobile phones attributed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cell site analysis ’ which can plot how and when mobiles access the phone network and internet , as well as the movements of two cars that were said to have been part of the plot .
She described how the phones and the cars appeared to move between the Abedi family home in Fallowfield and other places around Greater Manchester , including Somerton Court in Blackley .
The pair used a Toyota Aygo car to move chemicals until it was involved in the crash on March 23 from which they fled .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sonata purchased at Radcliffe Car Auctions the next day .
Ms Cross took the jurors through a series of pictures taken by ANPR ( automatic number plate recognition ) cameras which showed the cars heading into and out of Manchester .
Salman Abedi urged a student ‘ do chemistry so you can build a bomb ’ and described jihad as ‘ beautiful ’ , the jury heard .
A teenage associate said he started laughing when he heard the comments as he didn ’ t take them seriously .
In the months after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arena suicide bombing .
The jurors heard evidence from a teenage associate of the Abedi brothers , a student , who described hearing Salman Abedi express support for ‘ jihad ’ .
In a police video interview played in court , the witness , who can not be named for legal reasons recalled a trip in Hashem Abedi ’ s car when Salman Abedi was also on board .
Salman Abedi , according to the witness , had said : “ Do chemistry so you can build a bomb.
” The Arena bomber @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how being a martyr was ‘ something big ’ and that ‘ jihad is beautiful ’ , the jurors were told .
The young witness said he ‘ didn ’ t used to think he was an inspiration in any way shape or form ’ and that he actually thought Salman Abedi was ‘ a bit dopey ’ .
He said he ‘ started laughing ’ when he heard the comment and that Salman Abedi may also have laughed too .
“ To be honest even if he had said to me ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bomb ’ I wouldn ’ t have believed him .
That ’ s how insane it is , you know what I mean ?
” said the witness , who went on that he did not believe the Abedi family was ‘ that type ’ .
He told the interviewing police officers that Salman Abedi would tell stories ‘ about prophets ’ and had told him : “ Life ’ s temporary , make sure you don ’ t get lost.
” The court heard that Salman Abedi had told the young associate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you go straight to heaven.
” Salman Abedi had previously associated with a gang of Libyans from Moss Side known as ‘ The L Squad ’ , according to the witness .
He had seen him playing football and ‘ his lads were bad boys ’ .
Later , the jurors heard from another witness , who said he had lived at the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfied in August 2015 .
He had known Hashem Abedi from Burnage High School , he said .
He told the court that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Salman Abedi had ‘ shown empathy ’ to ISIS during a TV news story on Iraq and had complained about how the media had ‘ attacked ’ them .
He said Hashem Abedi was ‘ in agreement ’ with his brother although others at the dinner had disagreed .
The jurors were told the Abedi family had plans to leave the country and that the next time he saw them was in April 2017 when he was sent to their home by his father in Libya to collect some post .
Asked about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ I was a little surprised .
At the time I was living there Salman was going to the gym .
In April he had lost quite a lot of weight .
He was wearing traditional Islamic clothing.
” Under cross-examination by Stephen Kamlish QC , defending Hashem Abedi , it was suggested that he could not recall his client saying anything for or against ISIS and that others had made the comments .
The witness accepted that ‘ could be true ’ .
A friend of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do with the plot .
Jurors heard the university student , a member of the city ’ s Libyan community who knew Abedi from school , had been suspected by detectives of helping the bomber and his brother Hashem buy the Nissan Micra used to store explosives , before looking after it when they flew out of Manchester the month before the attack .
The witness admitted he helped the brothers purchase the car but insisted : “ I can say one billion per cent I was never tasked to look after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrested and interviewed a number of times following the bombing but was released without charge .
In a statement he made to the police which was read out in court , the man said he knew the battered old Micra was parked in Rusholme because Salman Abedi had told him so .
The court heard the brothers , when they realised flights had been arranged for them to leave the UK for Libya in April 2017 , bought the Micra at short notice and then used it to store the explosives they had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up near a block of flats , Devell House , in Rusholme .
When the car was found by the police two weeks after the bombing , the jurors were told traces of TATP explosive were found in the boot as well as bags of screws and nails and more than ten litres of sulphuric acid .
The witness said in his statement : “ I never knew Salman had returned to the UK and I was shocked to find out he was the Manchester Arena bomber.
” He said he had not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ no idea ’ what Salman Abedi had been planning .
The witness said : “ Salman was a really good friend of mine .
We used to go to the gym and play five-a-side football together.
” He said his friend ‘ became more religious ’ while he said he spent more time ‘ chilling and smoking and generally having a good time going out ’ .
He admitted he had helped the brothers by finding the Micra on Gumtree and then going with them to a test drive and buy the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When he asked Salman Abedi why he needed a car when they were about to fly out of the country , he admitted his friend gave a ‘ vague answer ’ .
He said he knew the area where the car had been parked up because it was where he purchased cannabis .
The witness said he was revising for his university exams on May 23 , 2017 , when he saw that Salmam Abedi had been named as the person responsible for the bombing .
“ I thought s**t , what did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The witness said that as a result he drove straight away to Rusholme , parked at a petrol station and looked at the car park of Devell House and saw that the Micra was still there .
He said he felt ‘ relieved ’ when he saw the car still there because he thought it had been used in the bombing .
But he said he didn ’ t tell the police about the Micra as his boss had advised him not to .
He admitted he changed his phone number a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so because he had received ‘ too many calls from the media asking about my relationship with Salman ’ .
He confirmed that in February 2015 he visited Abdalraouf Abdallah in HMP Belmarsh with Salman Abedi .
The jurors have previously heard that Abdallah was later convicted of terror crimes .
He described it as a ‘ social visit ’ and that he only visited him once whilst he was on remand accused of terrorism offences .
Jurors were shown CCTV of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi arriving from Libya four days before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They were shown CCTV footage of Salman Abedi arriving back at Terminal 3 at Manchester Airport on the morning of May 18 , 2017 .
He had flown in from Libya via Istanbul and Dusseldorf .
The footage showed Salman Abedi queuing with other arriving passengers , with no hold luggage but a rucksack .
He visited WH Smiths in the terminal building where he purchased a mobile phone sim card and around the same time called his gran in Libya , the jurors were told .
The court heard he then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s bus station where he caught a bus to Wythenshawe .
From there , the jurors were told , he booked a taxi under the name ‘ Sal ’ , before taking a Skoda Octavia from outside Wythenshawe police station taxi to Rusholme .
More footage shown to the jury showed him examining the Nissan Micra where he had stored the explosives before flying to Libya , parked outside a block of flats , Devell House , in Rusholme .
The footage showed Salman Abedi near Oxney House and Gardens and at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could be seen lifting the boot .
He then took another taxi to Manchester and later met the landlady of a third floor one-bed apartment at Granby Row in Manchester City centre .
The prosecution say this was where he finally constructed his IED .
CCTV showed Salman Abedi climbing the stairs to the property with the landlady .
In a statement read to the court , she confirmed she had advertised the property on Gumtree and that she had been called by a man from Libya who identified himself as ‘ Sam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the apartment in the afternoon of May 18 , 2017 , the jurors were told .
She said she offered to shake the man ’ s hand and that he shook her hand while still holding a mobile phone .
“ I thought this was a religious thing and he didn ’ t want to touch my hand , ” she said .
The man told him he was called Sam Abdi and was studying at Salford University .
She said she showed ‘ Sam ’ around the apartment and that she got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particularly interested ’ as he was asking no questions and made no positive comment .
She said it ‘ took me by surprise ’ when he decided to rent it .
They agreed £775 for two weeks and ‘ Sam ’ paid her £600 cash as he said he didn ’ t have the rest , the jurors were told .
She counted the money and gave him the key , she said .
She asked him to write down his home address and email on a piece of paper .
He gave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hotmail address which had been created in Libya and had been accessed only twice , the jurors were told .
The landlady said 'Sam ' said he would get his car and she showed him the basement and where the bins were .
She explained it was another £10 a week for a parking space and he agreed .
The witness said she texted ‘ Sam ’ on May 23 to ask if he wanted more than two weeks and when she had no reply she emailed him with a copy of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the news on May 25 the name Salman Abedi as the person responsible for the bombing , and she recalled thinking it was similar to ‘ Sam Abdi ’ .
She said she googled ‘ Salman Abedi ’ and a series of images came up .
She said she ‘ instantly recognised ’ it was the same man to whom she had rented her apartment .
“ I was in complete shock and I could not believe the person responsible for the atrocity was staying in my apartment before he carried out this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jurors saw footage of Salman Abedi carrying out three reconnaissance missions at the venue before his deadly attack .
Salman Abedi returned to Manchester Airport , via Istanbul and Dusseldorf , from Libya , on the morning of May 18 , 2017 , first taking a bus to Wythenshawe and then taking a taxi back to Rusholme to check on the Micra .
Tthe jurors were shown CCTV of Salman Abedi carrying out reconnaissance at the Arena on the day he flew back into Manchester , the first of three scoping exercises before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ played to the jury showed him walking by a long queue of people at the box office and then standing and looking at concert-goers who were on their way to a Take That gig at the venue on the evening of May 18 , before going on to buy batteries and a large Kangol suitcase from the Arndale Centre .
He detonated his bomb days later close to the same spot , killing 22 and injuring hundreds more .
The jurors saw footage from the following day , May 19 , which showed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up in Rusholme - the vehicle the brothers are said to have purchased hastily to store TATP explosives when they left the country a month earlier .
Footage from later that day showed him struggling to carry the heavy suitcase - by now said to be weighed down with explosives - into the apartment at Granby Row .
Footage showed Salman Abedi making a series of shopping trips to Screwfix on the Piccadilly trading estate from where he purchased more than 5,000 nuts to use as shrapnel , and to Manchester Merchants in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heard he purchased a large money tin with a £5 note design which was used to make the bomb .
He also went to Sports Direct to buy a 65 litre Karrimor Bobcat rucksack used to carry the device .
More footage was played from the following day which showed Salman Abedi on more shopping trips .
He purchased 3,000 screws as well as dowels , nuts and a 25 litre swing bin , a spade , a saw , four packets of Gorilla glue , a packet of Gorilla tape , three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drawers and two oak-effect doors at B & Q in Cheetham Hill , the jurors were told .
B & Q shop assistant Steven Dooley , in a statement read to the court , said he thought Abedi was a shoplifter .
When police visited him in the wake of the bombing , Mr Dooley said he ‘ put two and two together and thought that maybe it was linked to what happened at the Arena ’ .
The jurors were shown footage of a second visit Salman Abedi made to the Arena @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still showed him sitting on a wall at the bottom of a flight of stairs up towards the foyer and then later looking down the stairs , at around 7pm , before returning to the apartment at Granby Row .
The jurors also saw footage of a third and final reconnaissance mission at around 6.30pm on the day of the attack - CCTV played in court showed him appearing to speak to a member of security staff and then leaving in a black cab about seven minutes after he arrived .
The court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and texts to an unknown number in Libya and , at 7pm , he was sent two texts , the first saying ‘ call ’ and the second saying ‘ asap ’ .
Footage from earlier that day showed Salman Abedi wheeling the blue suitcase along the back streets of Manchester - the jurors have been told it was never recovered by police .
A tough day for families watching in remote courtrooms up and down the country and the jury .
Hashem Abedi watched impassively from the dock as the court was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his brother Salman detonated the bomb in his backpack and told shocking details of the injuries inflicted .
CCTV of Salman Abedi just 19 seconds before he detonated his device was shown .
Wearing a cap and carrying a heavy bomb in his rucksack , the footage showed him mingling with concert-goers as they left the Arena at 10.30pm on May 22 , 2017 .
Moments later he detonated the device while standing in the middle of the foyer , killing himself and 22 others as well as seriously injuring dozens more .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the life-changing injuries suffered by some of the 359 people .
Aside from the 22 who died , 92 were seriously injured but survived , including one woman , 51 , who broke both her legs in the blast but who also suffered shrapnel wounds in the 1996 IRA bombing of Manchester .
The jurors were shown CCTV footage of Salman Abedi ’ s final movements on the day of the bombing .
Wearing a heavy Karrimor rucksack , he was seen leaving the apartment at Granby Row in Manchester city centre - @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the device - before taking a black cab to Shudehill where he took a tram for the short journey to Victoria railway station .
The jurors were told he twice called the Abedi family home in Libya , one of the calls lasting four minutes and 12 seconds .
He was seen on more footage sitting on benches before going to the public toilets in the Arena for 19 minutes .
Salman Abedi then returned to Victoria station where he was seen on a bench on the Metrolink platform before returning for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jurors were told he remained out of view of any cameras for an hour and then returned to detonate the device , as the foyer was filling with people , at 10.31pm .
One CCTV still , taken 19 seconds before the blast , showed Salman Abedi in the centre of the foyer as it filled with people .
The jurors were told about desperate attempts to resuscitate the injured and how a ‘ triage medical station ’ was set up at the railway station as armed police checked for any secondary devices @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who died were at the time of the explosion was shown the jury , illustrating how those closest were just two metres from the bomber while the furthest was more than 20 metres away .
The jurors heard Salman Abedi was dismembered and decapitated in the blast , with some of his clothing later being found on the ceiling of the foyer .
He was identified in part thanks to DNA which matched DNA taken from him during an arrest for shoplifting in 2012 .
A Halifax bank card featuring his name was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Almost 3,000 screws , nuts and bolts were found at the scene , embedded in walls , an advertising poster and in the bodies of victims .
More were found during a renovation of the Arena in 2019 , the jurors were told .
A Showsec supervisor , in a statement read to the court , said he first noticed a flash and saw the explosion .
“ The next thing I knew I was on the concourse .
I didn ’ t know how I ended up getting there , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he had been knocked unconscious and had been carried to the concourse .
He said he went to the foyer ‘ to see if I could help ’ and that he only realised later , when he arrived home , that he had been injured .
Hashem Abedi missed the entire day - the jurors were told that he was in the cells talking to his legal team while the jurors were shown pictures of the Arena attack .
Salman Abedi left a note at the rented flat where he assembled the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaving ‘ any mess ’ , the jury was told .
He scrawled the note on a piece of kitchen roll which he left on a counter in the kitchen of the city centre flat he had rented in a false name before going to the Arena to detonate the bomb in his backpack .
The court heard details of police searches carried out at the Granby Row apartment and other sites across the city in the aftermath of the bombing .
They were shown a picture of a hand-written note from ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the one-bed apartment at Granby House , where the prosecution say Salman Abedi assembled the device .
It read : “ Sorry if there is anything missing in the apartment or any mess made the extra 150 and the rest of the week ’ s rent can hopefully cover it .
“ Sam ” .
” Despite booking it for two weeks , he had only been in the apartment for four days by the time he carried out the attack at the Arena .
Traces of TATP explosives were found in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the court heard .
Other ‘ significant ’ finds were made at Somerton Court , Blackley , and at the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfield .
In the bins outside the home , officers found ID cards for both brothers for pilgrimages to Mecca as well as a scrap of paper with a hand-written email address ‘ bedab7jeana @ gmail.com ’ .
The jurors had previously heard that the address translates to ‘ to slaughter we come ’ in Arabic and was used to purchase one of the ‘ precursor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Amazon , namely 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide .
Other images were shown in court of cut up pieces of retail-sized Pride vegetable oil tins found in the bins and in the garden shed at the family home - attempts to make prototype parts for a bomb .
Inside the house , police found a series of electrical items such as a circuit board , transistors , an engineering text book and batteries in the box room at the house as well as hand-written notes and diagrams about power and electronics on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pictures of three plastic containers inside a San Francisco 49ers hold-all which were all said to contained concentrated sulphuric acid , another of the ‘ precursor chemicals ’ for TATP .
Nails and screws were also found in the car , with traces of TATP detected on the driver ’ s seat .
The jurors were also told about the discovery of two passports , one British and one Libyan , in the name of Salman Abedi found in a Nike bag abandoned under a railway arch on Fairfield Street near Piccadilly railway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ showed Salman Abedi carrying a small bag through Manchester city centre on the day of the bombing .
He is also seen dragging a large blue Kangol suitcase - which he used to transport items from the Micra to the Granby Row apartment when he returned alone from Libya .
The jurors were told that the suitcase was dumped near bins on Ebden Street in the city centre and taken a tip in Gorton from where it could have gone to an incinerator in Runcorn or a larger tip at Pilsworth near Bury @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pilsworth tip featuring 2,205 police man hours , the suitcase was never discovered , the jurors heard .
No sign of Hashem Abedi in the dock for the second day - this time the jurors are given no explanation beyond what they were told the day before .
Before they came into court , Abedi ’ s junior counsel said his client wanted to remain with his solicitors in the cells .
He had been ‘ advised ’ about failing to appear in the dock but decided to ignore the advice and stick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trial .
When the jurors were finally brought into court , they were shown a mock-up of the devastating improvised explosive device that killed 22 people .
They saw a 65 litre Karrimor rucksack similar to one used in the attack with a large money tin inside it packed with 30 kilos of shrapnel surrounding a paint tin .
The paint tin on the real device was stuffed with up to five kilos of home-made explosives .
The jurors heard scientific evidence about the pieces of bomb-damaged metal that were found at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and how the explosives and device were constructed .
Explosives expert Lorna Philp told the jurors the device was constructed using a large money tin featuring a £5 note design on the outside , a five-litre paint tin and ‘ an extremely large quantity of shrapnel of nuts and screws ’ .
She concluded the explosive charge was TATP and a detonator was made using a drinks can .
The jurors were shown images of pieces of a switch found at the Arena used to set off the bomb as well as photos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the scene .
Ms Philp , having seen CCTV of the blast , said she believed the switch was in Salman Abedi ’ s jacket pocket .
The expert estimated up to five kilos of TATP - an ‘ extremely sensitive primary high explosive ’ - were used in the device although she added she could not give an accurate figure .
She agreed with a suggestion from the Crown ’ s prosecutor Duncan Penny QC that 27 kilos of nuts and 1.5 kilos of screws were recovered from the Arena .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she said : “ The only reason to add shrapnel to an IED is to cause injury to persons within the vicinity when the device functions.
” A mock-up of the device the Crown say was used in the attack was brought into court and shown to the jurors .
Up to six kilos of TATP could have been manufactured from the known amount of chemicals which had been purchased in the months before the bombing , the court heard .
Ms Philp detailed exactly how TATP is made and how the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hours depending on the circumstances .
She said one theory was that it was manufactured at Somerton Court , stored in the Micra and then moved to the Granby House where the process of manufacture was completed before the device was assembled .
She agreed it could have been dried out on ‘ carpet protector ’ laid out on the floor at the Granby House apartment .
She said it was also possible the TATP could have been manufactured in one large batch at Granby House although it would have been ‘ more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an accidental detonation .
She said it would have been possible to manufacture the TATP in smaller batches over a longer period of time .
Before the jurors came into court , the defence told the judge their client had ‘ chosen not to ’ attend the proceedings .
So it came as a surprise to everyone when Hashem Abedi suddenly appeared up the stairs into the court to hear legal argument in the absence of the jury .
The defence tried to stop the jury seeing an infamous Islamic State video detailing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ TATP published online by ISIS in late 2016 .
But the judge allowed it .
The prosecution admitted they had no evidence to say the brothers definitely viewed the footage but they pointed to ‘ startling similarities ’ between the device made on the video and the final Arena bomb .
Stephen Kamlish , defending , said ‘ it 's not evidence at all ’ , didn ’ t prove anything and should be ruled out .
He said there was a danger that the jury would conclude that the defendant must have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prejudice ’ his client .
But the judge sided with the prosecution and the video was shown to the jury .
The clip played to the jury showed a masked jihadi wearing white gloves carefully making TATP in a kitchen , using household products , with an icon of an Islamic State flag in one corner of the screen .
Speaking in Arabic but with English subtitles , the man casually describes how some of the items required can be obtained in the shops and that you should wear a mask to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as ‘ white ice ’ .
“ Only prepare this shortly before an operation , ” the masked figure said .
The device would be detonated ‘ with Allah ’ s permission ’ , he said .
Step-by-step instructions were given on how to manufacture both the explosive and the detonators using rolled up pieces of aluminium from a soft drinks can .
The precise nature of the detonators used in the Arena bomb was never established from what was found at the scene , explosives expert Lorna Philp told the court .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ brothers were inspired by this video came from the fact that the remains of two drinks cans were found strewn around the bomb-damaged foyer , she said .
The jurors also learned fingerprints of Hashem Abedi were found on cut up pieces of tin at the family home .
The brothers ’ prints were found on the inside and outside surfaces of pieces cut from six oil drums found in the shed , bins and garden of the family home in Fallowfield , the court heard .
The jurors heard evidence from forensic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tin that were uncovered by police following the explosion .
Several pieces from one of the retail-sized Pride vegetable oil drums were found at the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfield and others were found in the Granby House apartment , Mr Ryder told the court .
One piece from the same tin was also found lodged in a piece of green fabric - said to have been a part of the final IED - in the arena foyer following the bombing .
The jurors were also shown an animation which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ form one tin , although the jurors were told not all of this drum was found .
Fingerprints from both Hashem and Salman Abedi were found on the inside and outside of a number of pieces of cut metal from the six drums , five of them Pride vegetable oil drums and one of them a KTC brand of oil , the court was told .
The prosecution say the cut pieces of tin were early experiments for making prototype parts of a bomb .
Hashem Abedi was n't in the dock for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was n't even in the building and refused to leave Belmarsh prison .
Before the jurors were brought into court , his QC Stephen Kamlish said he ’ d spoken to his client on the phone and that Hashem Abedi wasn ’ t in court because he was ‘ unwell ’ .
The prison had ordered his client to be seen by a psychologist or psychiatrist , said the QC .
“ He says this morning he made an effort .
He left his cell and went to the search area and could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was feeling exhausted , ” said Mr Kamlish , going on that his client had been discussing with his legal team whether he could ‘ carry on ’ .
Abedi had been ‘ showing some forbearance ’ and was trying to be ‘ responsible ’ .
“ But he says the point has come where he just feels he can not come in .
He says he ’ s getting flashbacks , ” said Mr Kamlish The QC said his client ‘ had virtually no sleep last night ’ .
“ He ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s overwhelmed by it all , ” he said .
The defendant had told him it was ‘ very doubtful ’ he would be able to come to court tomorrow , said Mr Kamlish adding that his view was that his client would not be able to come into court for the next two days .
His client , when asked , had said he did not want the trial to proceed in his absence , added the QC , saying that he thought his client should ‘ see and hear ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ read the prosecution papers .
Duncan Penny QC , prosecuting , agreed it was ‘ important evidence ’ coming up , covering fingerprints and DNA .
The judge said he ‘ required ’ the defendant to attend court in the morning and said it was ‘ of the utmost importance ’ that the defendant was seen by someone at the prison today .
The jurors were brought back and told by the judge that with Hashem Abedi feeling unwell , the proceedings would be adjourned for the day .
Hashem Abedi was brought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to come into court again , alleging he had been beaten up by prison guards .
Before the jurors were brought into court , his QC , Stephen Kamlish , asked the judge for the court ’ s own nurse to see his ‘ upset ’ client , who , he alleged , had been brought to court against his will and beaten up by guards who forced him into the prison van and punched him , even though they had 'no power ' to compel him to court .
Abedi had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and another 5g in the morning leaving him ‘ relaxed but very sleepy ’ , the barrister added .
“ I ’ m not criticising anybody .
The fact is the officers must have believed that… in refusing to come with them they were entitled to use certain force and that ’ s what happened , ” said Mr Kamlish .
`` Although now in the building , his client was not coming into court because ‘ he does not feel well enough and nor does he feel able to concentrate on matters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Abedi was ‘ getting flashbacks ’ , was hardly sleeping and had not eaten today as he had been removed from his cell , said the QC .
After an adjournment the court ’ s nurse saw the defendant for 45 minutes and reported back to the judge that he was fit to attend court .
The evidence finally resumed at 2pm when the jurors heard from GMP fingerprint expert Philip Balduini .
The jurors were told a piece of metal found at the arena following the 2017 terror attack was linked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was found lodged in a piece of green fabric in the arena foyer after Salman Abedi detonated an improvised explosive device .
The cloth had been used to cover the top of the device inside his backpack .
The jurors were told that the small strip of metal found in the foyer was from a Pride vegetable oil tin and that other pieces of the same drum were found at the Abedi family home in Fallowfield and at the city centre flat where the bomb was assembled .
Hashem Abedi ’ s finger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pieces of the oil drum , used to make prototype bomb parts , found at his home and the city centre flat .
Mr Balduini told the jury a series of finger and palm prints from both the defendant and Salman Abedi were found on scraps of metal found at the family home on Elsmore Road .
The court heard that most of one of the drums was found at the family home but six pieces of the same tin were found at the city centre flat where the Arena device was assembled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pieces from this tin was found at the Arena following the bombing .
An animation played in court showed pieces of the part of the oil tin found at Elsmore Road folded with tape wrapped around it to fashion another container , with a lid cut from another tin placed into the base .
Ten of Hashem Abedi ’ s finger and palm prints were found on the inside and outside of this improvised container , the jurors were told .
Two more of his prints were on both sides of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improvised container , the court heard .
The jurors were told the six pieces of the same vegetable oil tin were found rolled up in a blue plastic bag in the basement at Granby Row .
Four of the defendant ’ s prints were found on these six pieces .
When the jurors were sent home for the day , the judge reminded Abedi - who was by now back in the dock and looking perfectly fit and healthy - that he was ‘ required to be here in the morning ’ .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the building but would n't come into court .
His defence said he ’ d prefer to remain with his legal team , although all of them seemed to be in court .
When the jurors were brought in , they heard more evidence that Hashem Abedi ’ s fingerprints were left all over items he used to make and store an improvised explosive device .
The prints were found on cut up pieces of vegetable oil tin manipulated to make parts for an earlier version of the device found in the shed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fallowfield , the court heard .
Jurors were told they were also found in the flat Blackley and the Nissan Micra .
GMP fingerprint expert Philip Balduini was back in court and told the jurors details of the defendant ’ s palm and fingerprints found at the Abedi family home on cut-up pieces of vegetable oil tins .
They were also said to have been found on a rolled up document uncovered in the attic at the Abedi home featuring a list of questions about electricity and also on A4 sized hand-drawn diagram @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alarm ’ found in an upstairs boxroom .
The defendant ’ s prints were also found at the 12th floor flat at Somerton Court in Blackley where the TATP was made .
His thumbprint was on a door to the metre cupboard while prints from his right hand were found on the divan drawer , the jurors were told .
His prints were also said to have been found the living room door frame , a piece of plastic tracking beside it and a nearby light switch .
Hashem Abedi ’ s prints @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Lindum Street in Rusholme which was used as a delivery address for bomb-making chemicals , and in the Micra which was found parked up near Devell House in Rusholme in the days after the bombing .
The court heard his prints were on : two plastic containers inside a San Francisco 49rs hold-all in the rear of the car ; on a small plastic container found on the rear seats ; on three large blue plastic drums on the back seats ; on three boxes of nails found inside one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seven packs of nails found in another of the blue drums .
On that Thursday afternoon , having heard little evidence , the jurors were sent home for a long weekend .
The judge makes his displeasure at the defendant ’ s failure to appear in the dock clear , saying he expected the defendant to be in the dock , not just in the court building , on Monday .
Hashem Abedi refused to leave his cell at HMP Belmarsh claiming again that he was ‘ unwell ’ .
The judge said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been involved in an incident at the prison ‘ last Sunday ’ involving ‘ disruption if not a degree of violence ’ which had resulted in ‘ privileges ’ being withdrawn .
His defence counsel Stephen Kamlish QC confirmed to the court his client now had only one phone call a day to speak to his solicitors .
The judge said that given the medical evidence they had had so far ‘ it doesn ’ t seem to me there ’ s any justification for his non-appearance over and above his choice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ .
More than an hour late , the trial proper resumes at 11.30am with GMP fingerprint expert Philip Balduini completing his evidence , telling the jurors that Hashem Abedi ’ s prints were found on the six rolled up metal cylinders the Crown recovered from the basement at Granby Row .
The Crown said these were attempts to fashion detonators from cut up pieces of oil drum .
The DNA Hashem Abedi was found at Granby Row and in the old Nissan Micra in which bomb-making equipment was transported and stored , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It was found on bedding , curtains and a sleeping bag dumped in a bin room at an apartment block in Blackley , on a bathroom door-handle at a terraced house in Rusholme said to have been used as a delivery address for chemicals and on items found in the Micra used to transport and store bomb-equipment , jurors were told .
Although his DNA wasn ’ t found at a city centre apartment , his fingerprints were found on six metal cylinders dumped in the basement , jurors were told .
Forensic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the defendant ’ s DNA was found at Somerton Court , at Lindum Street in Rusholme and in the Micra which was found a week after the bombing parked up in Rusholme .
Ms Davidson , who analysed 450 items , told the jurors there was ‘ extremely strong support ’ that DNA profiles found on bedding and curtains dumped in a bin room at Somerton Court had been provided by Hashem and Salman Abedi , adding that this meant there was a one-in-a-million chance these profiles had come from someone else .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ found in a pillow case recovered from the bin room while there was also ‘ extremely strong support ’ for a mixed profile found on a sleeping bag belonging to brother Hashem , the witness told the court .
More DNA linked to Salman Abedi was found in a washing machine in the kitchen and on a living room plug socket , the jurors were told .
His DNA was also found on the TV on-off switch and on a fuse box in a cupboard .
Profiles linked to Hashem Abedi ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a bottle of Levi Roots Caribbean Crush drink in the Micra , the court heard .
His DNA was also said to have been on a blue drums recovered from the rear seat and on a B & Q hammer in the rear footwell of the car .
A mixed profile found in a San Francisco 49ers holdall recovered from the car provided ‘ extremely strong support ’ for Salman Abedi having contributed to the profile , the court heard .
A profile from a brown sock inside the hold-all provided ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contributing to it , according to Ms Davidson .
The expert said there was a one in a billion possibility that the profile found in the sock belonged to someone other than Salman Abedi .
The jurors were then played an animation showing all the forensic evidence obtained from the Nissan Micra , both DNA and fingerprint .
The expert also outlined how Salman Abedi ’ s DNA was found at or near the apartment at Granby House .
After the jurors left court , the judge confirms a doctor has seen the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is fit to attend the trial .
Abedi ’ s junior counsel , Richard Thomas , said that , contrary to reports earlier in the day , his client would be attending court in the morning .
Hashem Abedi was n't n the dock again - and had decided he ‘ no longer wishes to participate in the trial ’ , his QC told the judge .
His QC says Abedi had been ‘ fully advised ’ but he had made his decision .
After another delay of about 30 minutes , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no mention of the absent defendant .
The jurors were read the last of the ‘ agreed facts ’ The first concerned the email address ‘ bedab7jeana @ gmail.com ’ which was used to purchase 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide .
The agreed fact read to the jury states : “ The expression ‘ we come to slaughter ’ has become a widely used slogan , as a threat to potential opponents , in Salafi-Jihadi circles ( those with religious political ideology based on a belief in jihad in the form of physical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beliefs ) .
“ For instance , Katibat Al-Battar Al-Libi , an armed group operating in Syria , chose it as its slogan when it formed in 2012 .
The group was made up predominantly of Libyans but also others from North Africa.
” The jurors hear that Hashem Abedi told police ‘ I could never had envisaged that my brother had it in him to do this to innocent people ’ .
He declined to answer questions following his extradition from Libya in 2019 but denied any involvement in his brother Salman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arena in a prepared statement he gave to officers , the court heard .
He claimed he had been tortured in Libya .
The jurors were told he had refused to answer questions during four police interviews following his extradition from Libya where he was held by a militia .
But the court heard that , in a prepared statement given to officers , he said : “ I deny any involvement in the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena on the 22 May 2017 .
I was not involved in the instigation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first I heard of it was on the 23 May , a few hours before I was arrested by the FTS in Libya .
Had I had any idea of it I would have reported it to my mother initially and then to other family members to prevent it from happening .
“ I was shocked my brother had done this and felt bad for everybody .
I could never have envisaged that my brother had it in him to do this to innocent people.
” Mr Abedi ’ s statement continued : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I do not hold extremist views .
I do not delve too deep into anything other than pray and read Koran .
I have no interest in Daesh and have no sympathy or support for their ideology and extremism .
I did attend the mosque from time to time and wear traditional clothing at the time of visiting the mosque but this was not in support of ISIS but to practice my religion .
“ I am not a member of ISIS nor do I subscribe to their way of thinking or ideology.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ purchase sulphuric acid but insisted he had done so at the behest of his brother Salman .
Hashem Abedi ’ s statement concluded : “ I would like to add that these events happened over two years ago , my recollection is not as good as it would have been then .
During the last two years I have been held in Libya by the militia and subjected to torture .
“ It has been a difficult time for me for a number of reasons .
I could never comprehend that my brother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taking not only his life but that of 22 others and injuring many more .
“ I have been held in a small dark cell for 2 years and almost 2 months .
I have also been tortured .
I am relieved to be back in the UK and wish to assist in this investigation as much as I can .
I have asked my solicitor to prepare a statement for me as I wish to explain myself in the best way possible and assist the police as much as I am able @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s case to a close following 24 days of the trial , and the jurors then learned that the absent defendant would not be giving evidence .
The judge , Mr Justice Jeremy Baker , turned to Stephen Kamlish QC , defending , and said : “ Two matters I want to raise with you .
Firstly that the jury are aware that obviously that Mr Abedi is not in the courtroom albeit he ’ s in the court building .
I think it ’ s correct you are not asserting or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attend trial.
” The judge continued : “ Secondly , have you advised your client that the stage has now been reached at which he may give evidence and if he chooses not to do so , or having been sworn refuses to answer any questions , the jury may draw such inferences as will be proper from his failure to do so ?
” The judge told the jurors that was the end of the evidence in the case and he asked them to return to have the following day ( Wednesday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The judge asked Stephen Kamlish to reconsider the decision made by his client that he should not make a closing speech to the jury .
It was a ‘ fairly unusual ’ position and , despite his client ’ s instructions , the judge asked the QC to think whether it was ‘ in accordance with your professional duties ’ .
The barrister said it was the ‘ only proper course ’ but agreed to think again about it .
The prosecutor , Duncan Penny QC , noted there were other cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but he said these were short cases not one like this ‘ of the greatest complexity ’ .
He said he would not be waiving his right to make a closing address to the jury because of the defence ’ s decision not to make one .
The judge said he would be telling the jurors there was no obligation on the defendant to attend court and that they should not to ‘ draw any adverse inferences ’ from his absence .
The prosecutor confirmed he will address the ‘ bad character ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Abedi , namely the possession of drugs , driving without a licence and insurance , failing to stop at the scene of an accident and his admission he facilitated fraud .
In his prepared statement to police , the defendant said he had given a friend ’ s bank details to Salman Abedi so they could do ‘ a credit card fraud somehow ’ .
Mr Penny said he would be saying that the prepared statement was ‘ riddled with lies ’ .
During an adjournment , Hashem Abedi had a 40-minute video-link @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that as a result his client wished to be brought to court in the morning so he can continue to speak to him about what , if anything , he says during a closing speech .
It was agreed he would see his client at 9.35am but the judge stresses he wished to start with the jury at 10.30am .
Hashem Abedi came to the Old Bailey and sacks his entire defence team , including his QC Stephen Kamlish and his junior counsel Richard Thomas .
It was the second time during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In the absence of the jury , Mr Kamlish informed the judge the defendant has ‘ withdrawn instructions ’ and he does not wish to be in court and nor to represent himself in court or for anyone else to defend him .
The judge pressed the QC on whether his former client was told he had a right to be legally represented at public expenses and the barrister confirmed he had but that he had made a ‘ very firm decision ’ .
The defendant was later visited in the cells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his decision .
It said : “ I have withdrawn my instructions from my legal representatives .
I do not wish to participate in the trial .
It follows I do not wish to exercise my right to appoint new lawyers to represent me in court .
I will not be participating in the proceedings any further.
” The prosecutor , Duncan Penny QC , confirmed he did wish to make a closing address even though there would be no defendant in the dock and no closing speech on Mr Abedi ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what areas he wishes to cover in that closing speech .
Among other things he said he wants to be able to outline to the jury the questions he would have asked him had he decided to give evidence and draw together a ‘ very complicated case ’ .
For instance , he wanted to be able to suggest to the jurors what ‘ must have been ’ in the Nissan Micra by the time it was parked up in Rusholme before the brothers ’ flight to Libya .
He said he wants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence to suggest the brothers ’ movements to and from Somerton Court on April 6 , 11 and 12 with ‘ precursor chemicals ’ to make TATP .
“ In essence these are complicated matters based upon various aspects of circumstantial evidence , ” he said , adding that it would be ‘ most unfortunate ’ if the defendant were to benefit from ‘ his manipulation of the process ’ over the previous few weeks .
The judge adjourned to think about Mr Penny ’ s submissions .
When he returned the judge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some anxious thought ’ and said he thought it would be ‘ inappropriate ’ for the Crown to make a ‘ full closing speech ’ .
He allowed the prosecution to make a speech which included that the defendant had chosen not to give evidence and the questions that the prosecution would have asked him had he gone into the witness box .
The Crown could also raise the matter of the defendant ’ s ‘ withdrawal ’ from the trial and some ‘ factual context ’ .
The jurors were brought back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shared a ‘ common goal ’ with his suicide bomber brother , acting as his chauffeur , quartermaster and munitions expert in the months before the attack .
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker told the jurors the defendant was unlikely to return and that he had chosen not to have a defence team - his QC and junior counsel were also no longer in court .
The jurors were told they ‘ should not draw adverse inferences ’ from the absences before prosecutor Duncan Penny QC gave a closing speech in which he described @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Abedi ’ s ‘ chauffeur , quartermaster and munitions technician ’ in the months before the attack .
Mr Penny asked the jurors to ‘ consider the credibility ’ of the prepared statement Hashem Abedi had given to the police following his extradition from Libya .
It was the defendant ’ s right not to give evidence or answer questions but the jurors were also entitled to look at the evidence in front of him and ask whether the reason he had not answered those questions was that he had no answer to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that prepared statement was ‘ demonstrably riddled with lies ’ and was ‘ an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the investigators and explain away ’ what he knew about the evidence against him at that time and ‘ point the finger of responsibility at his dead brother ’ and ‘ evade responsibility ’ for what he described as a ‘ cruel and cowardly ’ attack at the Arena .
The defendant ’ s failure to give evidence was a ‘ thundering silence ’ to avoid explaining to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too ‘ had been a victim of Salman Abedi ’ .
He said that ‘ on the contrary ’ the prosecution said that Hashem Abedi was a ‘ willing and skilled accomplice ’ who shared a ‘ common goal ’ with his brother and had operated as a ‘ chauffeur , at times quartermaster and munitions technician with electrical know-how ’ .
The defendant , in his prepared statement , said he knew nothing about his brother ’ s plot and would have told his mother had he known about it .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asked the defendant had he given evidence in his own trial .
The QC then moved on to the phone calls to Libya made by Salman Abedi in the days leading up to the bomb .
The prosecutor told the jury : “ When you put that contact into context , you may think Salman Abedi had every opportunity to seek counsel and seek advice from his confederate brother who played such an integral role in their dire project .
“ This defendant had every opportunity to give his account over what took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deny such a suggestion and to describe to you his surprise , shock and disgust which he felt when he woke to the news that not only had his elder brother perpetrated his appalling atrocity but Salman had betrayed his own innocent kid brother by pulling the wool over young Hashem ’ s eyes in a most sophisticated fashion over all those days , weeks and months .
“ Ladies and gentlemen , we suggest this is nonsense and the defendant was together with his brother in this endeavour from start to finish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is testimony to that fact.
” The judge gave the jurors ‘ legal directions ’ before they consider verdicts .
Again , the defendant wasn ’ t in the dock and there was no defence team .
Jurors were warned to put aside any feelings of sympathy or emotion when they retired to consider verdicts .
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker cautioned the jurors against sympathy and emotion they might have about the case and decide the guilt or otherwise of the defendant ‘ with dispassion and objectivity ’ .
He told them : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sad event , so too is the suffering of serious injury ; the more so when the death and injury takes place prematurely in circumstances such as these .
“ It would be surprising therefore if you were not exercised to some extent with sympathy for the family and friends both of the deceased and the injured in this case .
“ However , as I am sure you will appreciate emotions are likely to obscure rather than clarify one ’ s ability to discern the truth , which is your task @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the purposes of the exercise which you will be performing when you deliberate upon the evidence next week , it is important for you to put any such feelings to one side for the time being and to undertake your task with dispassion and objectivity.
” In the absence of the defendant or any defence , the judge asked the jurors to consider nine points .
“ Firstly , there is no evidence that the accused had downloaded or viewed any items from the internet displaying an interest in either ISIS or any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ statement the accused denied holding such opinions , ” he said .
“ Secondly , in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for the purchases of sulphuric acid in the months leading up to the explosion , namely that it was needed for a car battery in Libya .
“ Thirdly , in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for the gathering of the metal tin cans , namely that in order to raise some money he was willing to sell them for scrap .
“ Fourthly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an innocent explanation for the discovery of any fingerprints on the metal tin can , namely that he would smoke in the garden shed at Elsmore Road in Rusholme ( sic ) and may well have touched the various items in the shed whilst doing so .
“ Fifthly , in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for having been to Somerton Court in Blackley , namely that his brother informed him that he was going to raise some money by subletting it .
“ Sixthly , in his prepared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for having purchased items such as nails and screws , namely that they were required to renovate the garden shed at Elsmore Road in Rusholme ( sic ) .
“ Seventhly , in his prepared statement whilst the accused accept being present when the Nissan Micra motor car was purchased , he denied knowing that it was to be used for the storage of any materials .
“ Eighthly , in his prepared statement the accused denied having had any involvement in the purchasing of hydrogen peroxide .
“ Ninthly , the accused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in April 15 , 2017 , and was not present in the UK at the date of the explosion on May 22 , 2017 .
Whereas in contrast , his brother Salman Abedi travelled back to the UK in May 18 , 2017 , and purchased further items which were used together with other items in the construction of improvised explosive device which he alone detonated a few days later on May 22 , 2017.
” The judge explained that for the sake of fairness he had not allowed the prosecution to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as he had with the defence , he set out key prosecution points the jurors may want to consider .
The judge continued : “ The prosecution accept that there is no evidence that the accused or for that matter his brother accessed extreme Islamicist material over the internet but point out that there is a significant amount of internet activity on the phones attributed to these individuals which the police have not been able to interrogate .
“ In any event , the prosecution point to the evidence of some of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the change in the attitude towards these issues not only by Salman Abedi but also by the accused in the period leading up to the explosion .
“ The prosecution submit that the accused ’ s explanation in his prepared statement for the various purchases of sulphuric acid is patently untrue , in that not only are car batteries likely to be readily available in Libya , but in any event acid is deemed to be a dangerous item which can not be transported to Libya in any quantity , let alone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the accused in this case which far exceeded what might be required for a car battery .
“ The prosecution submit that the accused ’ s explanation in his prepared statement for the gathering of metal tin cans is also untrue and point out that not only is there no evidence of any scrap merchant having purchased any of these items but the position of the accused ’ s fingerprints on some of these items is consistent with his involvement in the use of these tins in the production of the earlier stages @ @ @ @ @ @ @ items for the production of an improvised explosive device .
He continued : “ The prosecution point out that a knowledge of the functioning and production of electrical circuits is required in making an improvised explosive device of the type which was made in this case and point out that it was the accused who had the requisite knowledge in this case .
“ The prosecution submit that if one looks at the close connection which the accused had to the purchase of hydrogen peroxide , it is apparent that he was aware @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this item for which there is no other reason for him to possess it , other than as an ingredient in the manufacture of the explosive material TATP .
“ The prosecution point not only to the accused ’ s involvement in both the renting of the alternative premises at Somerton Court in Blackley and the purchase of the Nissan Micra motor car but also the car trip from Somerton Court to Devell House on April 15 , 2017 , and submit that this is consistent with his involvement in the manufacture of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safer way of producing this highly volatile explosive material and the subsequent transportation of the explosive substance and other items by taxi from Somerton Court to the Nissan Micra where it was stored pending his brother ’ s return from Libya to effect the final stage of the joint enterprise , namely the assembling of final device and its detonation in a suicide mission some four days later .
“ The prosecution acknowledge that the accused was not present in the UK at the time of the explosion but submit that this is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change of mind on the part of the accused and point out that there is no evidence either from the accused himself or in his earlier prepared statement to suggest that he had changed his mind and withdrawn from the criminal enterprise .
On the contrary , his prepared statement denies that he had any idea that his brother was capable of killing innocent people and that had he done so he would have tried to prevent him from doing so.
” Mr Justice Baker went on : “ Moreover , the prosecution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ returned to Libya his work of assisting in the manufacture of the explosive material and the earlier stages of production was done and only one person was needed to assemble and detonate the final device .
Moreover , there was the inevitable risk that had the accused been in the UK at the time of the explosion then he would have been arrested in the course of the subsequent police investigation .
“ In summary , these are some of the opposing points which may arise for your consideration in the course of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are of course free to accept any or none of them .
Essentially your task will be to reflect upon the evidence which you have both seen and heard in this courtroom and then to evaluate it carefully using your collective good sense and knowledge of the world .
In doing so you will wish to bear in mind which if any of these points chimes with your collective wisdom and which do not do so .
“ Once having considered the evidence in this manner , it will be for you to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to you and accordingly reach your verdicts in this case.
” The judge then began to sum up the case before adjourning over the weekend until Monday .
Before the jurors came into court , the judge confirmed Hashem Abedi has again refused to come to court despite being medically fit to attend .
He also told the prosecutor that a juror had called to say she was running a high temperature and had decided to ‘ self-isolate ’ for seven days .
The absence of the defendant ‘ hampered ’ any decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no submissions but he decided , instead of adjourning the trial for a week in the hope the juror would return , to discharge the poorly juror , suspected of having Covid-19 , and continue with 11 jurors .
When 11 jurors were brought into court , the judge told them he was going to discharge their colleague and carry on with 11 .
After completing his summing up of the case , he sent the jury out to consider their verdicts , telling them he will only accept unanimous verdicts for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for 15 minutes and the judge sends them home for the day .
After about three-and-a-half hours of deliberations , the jurors returned to court and found Hashem Abedi guilty to all counts on the indictment : 22 counts of murder , one count of attempted murder concerning all those who were injured but survived and one charge of conspiracy to cause an explosion .
Some members of the families wept in the public gallery as the verdicts are delivered in court 2 at the Old Bailey .
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker adjourned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the absent Abedi to inform him of the verdicts and to ask if he wanted to make submissions about his sentence , or be represented , despite having two QCs during the proceedings .

Hashem Abedi's trial was one which many feared would never happen.
The terrorist was in Libya at the time his brother Salman Abedi detonated a bomb at Manchester Arena, killing 22 people and himself, while injuring hundreds of others. Following the May 22, 2017, attack, Hashem was detained in Libya.
The north African country has been wracked by conflict and instability since dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi regime ended, after over 40 years, with a 2011 uprising. But, despite the challenges posed by the situation in Libya, in July last year, the authorities did succeed in bringing Hashem back from Tripoli to face justice, and within months he was on trial at the Old Bailey in London.
Manchester Evening News crime reporter John Scheerhout was there for every day of the trial, and now, for the first time, recounts how it unfolded, day-by-day, until a mass murderer was finally convicted.
February 4 Day 1
(Image: Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire)
The trial, which had been due to start three months earlier, finally started at the Old Bailey. Behind the scenes it had been beset by legal wrangling. Abedi had sacked his original QC and threatened to represent himself unless he got the replacement he wanted. Reluctantly, the judge consented. The rescheduled start was January 27. But Abedi’s legal team spent the first week trying - and ultimately failing - to get all the charges thrown out on the grounds Hashem Abedi’s extradition had been ‘illegal’ and, they argued, the UK authorities knew it.
The delay meant the start of the Arena public inquiry was also put back and friends and family of the victims were left frustrated.
When the trial eventually got underway, watching from the public gallery - just a few feet away from the defendant - was Lisa Rutherford, whose daughter Chloe was killed in the blast, as was Chloe’s partner Liam Curry.
(Image: MEN MEDIA)
A lot of families - both in the public gallery of court 2 at the Old Bailey, and at remote courtrooms in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Glasgow to which the proceedings were beamed - wanted to look Hashem Abedi in the eye, although it will have been deeply traumatic to hear the shocking details outlined by prosecutor Duncan Penny QC, over the following three days of his opening address.
Hashem Ramadan Abedi, 22, helped make the devastating improvised device which claimed the lives of 22 people and was ‘just as guilty’ of the atrocity as his older brother Salman, the jury was told, when the trial eventually got underway at last in court 2.
He bought screws and nails to use as shrapnel and also purchased two of the three ‘precursor chemicals’ required to make the TATP explosive used in 2017 bombing.
The jury were told his brother Salman was ‘in the midst’ of those departing the venue, and killed himself and 22 others when he detonated a bomb in his backpack in the foyer as concert-goers were leaving an Ariana Grande gig at Manchester Arena.
"The effects of the resulting explosion were both sudden and lethal," Mr Penny said
Some 22 people were killed, including ‘men, women, teenagers and a child’ and another 63 were ‘seriously injured’.
Some 111 were taken to hospital and 237 others were hurt. Some 670 people reported ‘psychological trauma’ while police had identified nearly 1000 victims, he told the jury.
Mr Penny said: “The prosecution case is that this defendant is just as guilty of the murder of the 22 people killed as was his brother. He is equally guilty of the attempted murder of many others and in doing so he was guilty of agreeing with his brother to cause an explosion or explosions of a nature likely to endanger life. Those allegations are reflected in the indictment in respect of which he is now in your charge.
“In acting as he did the Crown allege that this defendant assisted and encouraged his brother to act as his brother did intending to assist and encourage,” he said.
He intended ‘to kill and main and to injure as many people as possible’.
The QC said the defendant, with his brother, obtained ‘precursor chemicals’ for use in a bomb - sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide - and ‘experimented with metal containers’ to make detonators.
(Image: GMP)
The pair used a Nissan Micra to store bomb-making items and a Toyota Aygo for their plot and had addresses at Granby Row, in the centre of Manchester, where Salman Abedi assembled the device, and a flat on the 12th floor of Somerton Court, from where the bomb could be ‘manufactured and stored’, the court heard.
They bought ‘screws and nails’ to act as shrapnel to maximise harm to their victims, according to the Crown.
The QC went on: “This explosion was the culmination of months of planning, experimentation and preparation by the two of them.
“The defendant, through his conduct encouraged and assisted his brother Salman to carry out this attack. The bomb which was detonated was self-evidently designed to kill and maim as many people as possible. It was packed with lethal shrapnel and it was detonated in the middle of a crown in a very public area - the intention being to kill and inflict maximum damage,” he said.
The QC went on: “At 22.31 he detonated the bomb. In doing so, he killed 22 members of the public and injured many more who were in the immediate vicinity, some of them very seriously indeed.”
Salman Abedi’s body was ‘dismembered’ in the blast, the court was told.
February 5 Day 2
(Image: PA)
Before the jury was brought in, Hashem Abedi’s QC mentioned his client was feeling unwell. He had a hernia related to a kidney problem, according to the QC.
It wouldn't be his last moan, during a trial he appeared to disdain.
The jurors were brought in and the prosecutor resumed his opening address (concentrating on Hashem Abedi’s efforts to source chemicals for the bomb in the months preceding the attack).
But, about an hour into the morning session, the jurors were sent out for a break. When they came back, they saw the defendant wasn’t in the dock - the judge informed them Abedi had been feeling unwell before they started but had begun to feel worse. He was in pain, they were told.
The jurors were sent home until the morning. Then, in the absence of the jury, Abedi’s QC told the judge his client was allergic to tap water/chlorinated water and was now ‘suffering from dehydration’.
The judge asked the court security officials to make sure there was bottled water available for the defendant, telling them: “It’s essential this does not happen again.”
Hashem Abedi, who had remained down in the court cells while all this was discussed, wasn’t so unwell he needed to go to hospital. He was taken back to Belmarsh prison.
February 6, Day 3
(Image: GMP)
An email address in Arabic which translates as ‘we have come to slaughter’ was found in a bin at the Abedi family home during the investigation which followed the explosion, the jurors were told when the prosecutor resumed his opening address.
Hashem Abedi, who worked as a delivery driver at the Golden Tandoori in Manchester city centre, and his brother Salman, were said to have used the addresses and email accounts of associates to source 16 litres of sulphuric acid and 55 litres hydrogen peroxide via Amazon.
The explosive was produced at 12th floor flat at Somerton Court in Blackley before Salman Abedi assembled the IED, packed with screws and nuts to act as shrapnel, at an apartment at Granby Row in central Manchester, according to the prosecution.
The jurors were told that one email account - ‘bedab7jeana@gmail.com’ - was set up at 3.03pm on March 20, 2017.
It was created via free public wifi at Hulme Market in south Manchester, the court was told.
Duncan Penny QC, prosecuting, said that around the time the email address was created the data for a number attributed to Hashem Abedi suggested the phone was in the vicinity of the market at the time.
Some ten minutes after the account was created, a Toyota Aygo, purchased by Hashem Abedi in January 2017, was captured on Princess Parkway by ANPR cameras close to Hulme Market, the court heard.
Mr Penny told the jury that later, when the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfield was searched following the bomb, the same email address was found on a torn-up pieces of paper in a bin at the property.
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
The jurors were shown an image of the paper which had been put back together so they could see the hand-written email address in full.
The QC said the ‘literal translation’ of ‘bedab7jeana’ is ‘to slaughter we have come’ or ‘we have come to slaughter’.
Some 13 days later this email address was provided to Amazon for the purchase of 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide, the court heard.
A third brother, Ismail Abedi, bought Hashem and Salman one-way airline tickets for flights from Manchester to Libya via Amsterdam and Istanbul for travel on April 15, flying on the same planes as their parents.
Their imminent departure meant they could no longer use the flat at Somerton Court, nor an unoccupied terraced house at Lindum Street in Rusholme, to which they were getting chemicals delivered, the jury heard.
So they are said to have purchased a Nissan Micra from a vendor in Droylsden for £230 in which, according to the Crown, they stored bomb-making equipment and parked it up outside a block of flats at Devell House in Rusholme before their flights to Libya.
Salman Abedi flew back to Manchester on May 17, checked the Nissan was where it had been parked and then rented the apartment in Granby Row where he assembled the IED, said the prosecution.
The next day he walked to the Arena and CCTV images shown to the jurors revealed him walking along Chapel Street, and then along the foot of the steps up the venue itself and then in the City Room inside the premises - the same spot where he was to detonate the bomb five days later.
One image showed him walking by a queue of people at a ticket kiosk.
February 7, Day 4
Hashem Abedi denied involvement in the attack following his arrest and told police he would have tried to stop it by telling his mother.
He claimed he wasn’t a member of terror group ISIS or an extremist and was ‘shocked’ when he learned about the bombing in which 22 people were killed and hundreds of others were hurt, the court heard.
The former takeaway delivery driver insisted he had no idea what his older brother Salman was planning and would have tried to stop his sibling had he known.
Salman Abedi detonated a bomb in his backpack, said to be stuffed with about 3,000 pieces of shrapnel in the form of nuts weighing 30 kilos, at the end of the concert.
(Image: GMP/PA Wire)
The jurors heard Hashem said nothing when he was arrested and charged following his return from Libya in 2019, two years after the bombing.
The court heard he declined to answer questions when he was interviewed but he handed officers a signed statement in which he denied any involvement in the bombing.
The court heard that the former Burnage High School pupil said in his statement: “I was not involved in the instigation preparation or commission of it.
"The first I heard of it was on the 23 May, a few hours before I was arrested by the FTS in Libya. Had I had any idea of it I would have reported it to my mother initially and then to other family members to prevent it from happening. I was shocked my brother had done this and felt bad for everybody.
“I could never have envisaged that my brother had it in him to do this to innocent people.
“I am a practising Muslim. I do not hold extremist views. I do not delve too deep into anything other than I pray and read Koran. I have no interest in Daesh and have no sympathy or support for their ideology and extremism. I did attend the mosque from time to time and wear traditional clothing at the time of visiting the mosque but this was not in support of ISIS but to practice my religion. I am not a member of ISIS nor do I subscribe to their way of thinking or ideology.”
The jurors were shown a series of CCTV images showing Salman Abedi at the Arena on May 22, 2017, after traveling there by tram and after assembling the kilo device at a flat in Granby Row in central Manchester.
Shortly before the prosecution brought an end to the opening address, an image timed at 10.30pm showed Salman Abedi surrounded by people exiting the concert on the concourse, 15 seconds before he detonated the IED in his backpack.
February 10, Day 5
Salman Abedi visited a convicted terrorist in prison four months before he carried out the attack, the jurors heard.
He visited Abdalraouf Abdallah, who was a year into his nine-and-a-half year sentence for terror crimes, at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool in January 2017.
Abdallah, from Manchester, went to Libya to fight the Gaddafi regime but was left paraplegic after being shot in the back. He was later locked up for helping fighters join Islamic State in Syria, the court heard.
Abedi booked to visit Abdalraouf Abdallah at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool on January 17, 2017, but actually saw the inmate at the jail the following day.
The jurors were told Abdalraouf Abdallah travelled to Libya in 2011 and suffered a gunshot wound to his back whilst taking part in ‘fighting against the Gaddafi regime during the Libyan Revolution’.
It left him paraplegic and in a wheelchair, the court was told.
He was convicted of a terror offence in May 2016, namely that he assisted others to commit acts of terrorism by sending £2,000 to his brother, the court heard.
Abdalraouf Abdallah also ‘organised the terrorist activities of a group in Manchester’ by assisting two men to try to enter Syria via Turkey where the plan was for them to join his brother Mohammad Abdallah to ‘engage in fighting’, the jurors were told.
One of the men he assisted was said to have become an ‘Islamic State fighter’ and the obtaining of weapons was discussed, according to the ‘agreed fact’ put before the jury.
Abdalraouf Abdallah was handed an extended sentence of nine-and-a-half years including a five-a-half-year custodial term and was detained at HMP Altcourse in Liverpool from December 6, 2016.
The court was told that Salman Abedi and another man booked a ‘social visit’ to Abdalraouf Abdallah at the prison on 17 January
2017 but they did not attend.
On the following day, January 18, 2017, Salman Abedi and two other men visited Abdalraouf Abdallah between 5.59pm and 7.10pm, the jurors were told.
Salman Abedi also booked to visit the inmate on March 6 with two other men, but while they did attend, Salman did not on that occasion, the court heard.
February 11, Day 6
(Image: GMP)
Hashem Abedi hoarded old tins from a takeaway where he worked to make parts for a prototype IED, his murder trial was told.
He worked as a £5-an-hour delivery driver for a takeaway in Greater Manchester from where he collected retail-sized tins of sauce and vegetable oil as well as kebab skewers, a court heard.
He said he wanted to sell the metal for scrap but the prosecution say it was to build parts for a prototype bomb.
The jurors were read a statement from a witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who owned the takeaway in Greater Manchester where Hashem Abedi worked and from where he is said to have collected old tins.
The takeaway owner said Hashem Abedi, who was said to have smoked cannabis and taken ecstasy, could not be relied on to turn up for his shift as a £5-a-hour delivery driver and would pocket change due to the customers for himself.
“In my opinion he had the wrong idea of Islam,” he said.
The witness said that Hashem Abedi had asked him if he could take old tins of from the takeaway for scrap and he said he agreed as it meant he would have ‘less rubbish in the shop’.
Hashem Abedi also took tins from another premises next door but did not ask permission, the jurors were told.
Other staff at his takeaway reported that Hashem Abedi’s front garden looked like a takeaway shop because of all the tins there, he said.
Later, the jurors heard from another witness, who also cannot be named for legal reasons , who described how the defendant took tramadol and MDMA (ecstasy). He agreed the defendant’s ‘speciality’ was an ‘extra large spliff’.
(Image: Daily Record)
The witness agreed the defendant was scared of his ‘big brother’ Salman and never wanted him to know he smoked weed or did ‘anything naughty’.
He said Salman Abedi ‘complained about his brother' including that he wasn’t going to the mosque.
The witness agreed he had described, in his police statement, Hashem Abedi as ‘clumsy, a little stupid and goofy’.
February 12, Day 7
The start of proceedings was delayed and Hashem Abedi's QC said he was late arriving from prison that morning as there had been ‘trouble in the cells’.
When the jurors were brought into court, they heard evidence that Salman Abedi led a ‘gangster lifestyle’ during his teen years but was confronted by the mother of one of his friends because of ‘too strong’ religious views as he got older.
They were read a statement from a witness, not named for legal reasons, who knew Salman and Hashem Abedi.
He said Salman Abedi, in his teenage years, ‘used to smoke cannabis and would be violent and got into fights, kind of like a little bit of a gangster lifestyle’.
However, he added that as he got older Salman Abedi ‘became happier, more knowledgeable and he was always smiling’.
The witness said Salman Abedi ‘started becoming more religious’ in 2016.
He said his own mother’s view was that Salman Abedi’s religious views were ‘too strong and she told us not to listen to him’.
“My mum would would often confront Salman about his religious views and this sometimes resulted in conflict,” he said.
The witness said he recalled that around March 8, 2017, Salman Abedi asked if he could help him out by transferring money to a company in China to ‘help a guy who’s trying to buy some doors’.
Salman Abedi had told him he would be unable to make the transfer himself, according to the witness, who went on that he thought Salman Abedi did not have a bank account.
He said Salman Abedi arrived at his house in a grey Toyota Yaris which Hashem Abedi had driven.
The witness said he was driven to a branch of Halifax in Chorlton and they parked up in a Morrisons car park.
He said he went into the bank with Salman Abedi and sent the money to China and that Salman Abedi gave him £1,200 which was paid into his account.
The witness said that at the time he had ‘no concerns’ about this transfer.
The witness described how Hashem Abedi came to his house on March 2. 2017, and asked if he had an Amazon account.
He told the defendant he did and agreed to pay £69.36 for sulphuric acid - which the Crown said was one of the ‘precursor chemicals’ required to make TATP - from a supplier in Italy.
Hashem Abedi told him it was for a car, the jurors were told, although the witness went on that he didn’t know about cars or how they work.
While they were on a sofa, they searched for the item and purchased it, he said, adding that Hashem Abedi paid him back in cash.
“I didn’t think it was out of the ordinary and I hardly gave it another thought,” he said.
(Image: PA)
The witness described how the package was delivered and that he had been told that Salman Abedi collected it.
He went on that he was aware that Salman Abedi ‘developed strong religious views’ although he had not tried to ‘impress’ his views on him.
The witness went on that his mother thought ‘his interpretation of Islam was too strict’ and that ‘we should not listen to him’.
The witness said Salman and Hashem Abedi visited his home on April 6, 2017, and that was the last time he saw them.
The brothers said that they were travelling to Libya and that they ‘did not plan to return’, the court heard.
February 13, Day 8
(Image: Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire)
A dad warned a friend of Hashem Abedi against a ‘dodgy’ agreement to buy chemicals because they can be used to make explosives, the trial was told.
A friend of the accused, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the jury Hashem Abedi called him three months before the blast with a ‘bulls**t story’ that he needed battery acid for a generator at the family home in Libya.
When the witness told his father, the jurors were told the father said such acid can be used to make explosives and said: “This is dodgy, do not buy this online.”
The friend described how Hashem Abedi took drugs and loved to party in Amsterdam, London, Manchester and even at a beach house near Tripoli.
The witness said Hashem Abedi ‘took drugs because he knew what his brother was going to do’, and he described how the defendant asked him to purchase sulphuric acid three months before the bombing.
The defendant called him and asked ‘can you help me?’ before sending him a link on WhatsApp which took him to a sulphuric acid listing on Amazon.
The witness said he had no money and he ‘didn’t want to let him down’ and so asked his father to pay for the purchase instead.
He told the jury his father said sulphuric acid can be used to make explosives and he was said to have told his son: “This is dodgy, do not buy this online.”
The witness said he ignored a series of subsequent calls from Hashem Abedi and had not spoken to him since.
Under cross-examination by Stephen Kamlish QC, defending, the witness described how he noted that Hashem Abedi started ‘taking more drugs’, and how they had partied in Manchester, London, Amsterdam and at a beach house near Tripoli in Libya.
Pressed further on Hashem Abedi’s drug taking, the witness said: “I think he was taking drugs because he knew what his brother was going to do.”
(Image: PA)
The jurors were told that, at one party on Wilmslow Road in Manchester, Salman Abedi confronted brother Hashem as he had not been home all weekend. The witness said Salman Abedi was ‘shouting and being aggressive in front of all these guys’.
The witness described an incident in Libya when he and Hashem ‘had to hide’ from Salman Abedi as the latter considered him a ‘bad influence’.
The witness agreed with the QC that, when the brothers came back from Libya, they had become ‘more religious’.
They encouraged him to pray but they never discussed religion or extremism, he said.
The witness said he didn’t see the defendant from January 2016 until he saw him at a party in Amsterdam in October that year when, he agreed with Mr Kamlish, the defendant ‘became his old self again’ by taking drugs.
The witness described another occasion when he said he went to a mosque with Hashem Abedi where there were lots of Libyans and that they saw Salman Abedi sitting alone in the front row.
The jurors were told that Salman Abedi stood and took over the prayers when the imam started to stutter.
The witness later told police he thought this had been ‘a bit cheeky’.
February 14, Day 9
(Image: GMP)
Salman and Hashem Abedi fled the scene of a crash two months before the attack and branded one eye-witness ‘pussy’ for calling police, the jury heard.
The brothers ran away after crashing their silver Toyota Aygo into another car in Fallowfield on March 23, 2017, and failed to tend to the ‘traumatised and crying’ woman driving the other car, according to an eye-witness.
They were seen trying to repair the vehicle and ripping labels from cardboard boxes in the rear of their car before verbally abusing a pedestrian witness for calling police before running away in opposite directions, a jury at the Old Bailey in London was told.
The prosecution say the brothers were using the car as part of efforts to source ‘precursor chemicals’ used in the manufacture of the deadly TATP explosive used in the attack, but their plans were ‘thrown somewhat into disarray’ because of the crash.
A witness to the crash told the jurors he was walking along Wellington Road when he saw the crash at the junction with Mauldeth Road West in Fallowfield on the afternoon of March 23, 2017.
The silver Toyota Aygo in which the brothers were said to travelling suffered significant damage to its front when it hit another car, sending the car spinning into a wall, the court heard.
The woman driver of the other car was left ‘traumatised and crying’ but the occupants of the Aygo were more concerned about the cardboard boxes in the rear and trying to repair their vehicle so they could drive away, the court was told.
The witness told the jurors he was shocked that ‘no-one from the other car came over to see if she was OK’.
The witness said he went to see if there was a response from the two men.
“As I walking over there were two males looking at the car trying to repair and trying to move it, trying to drive off,” the witness said.
The bumper had come off the front of the car and the males were trying to put it back on and ‘get the car moving again’, he said.
He said: “One of them I pretty much came face to face with. I was on the phone to the police telling them about the incident. I had to get the car registration of the car that was involved.
“As I was walking over the two males, one of them approached me. He knew I was on the phone to the police and he called me a pussy.”
(Image: GMP)
The jurors are told that at the time the witness gave police descriptions of the two males: the driver was of middle eastern appearance with a light skin colour, aged about 20 and 6ft 1in tall, and he was wearing a navy hat with a multi-coloured bobble, a navy jacket and jogging bottoms; the passenger was a male with light brown skin, aged about 20, 5ft 11in, slim with short dark brown hair and he was wearing a tracksuit and flip flops.
Asked what he thought of the ‘pussy’ jibe, he said: “I was kind of shocked. Obviously I was on the phone reporting the incident. As soon as he said that to me, they both went off in different directions.”
The witness said there were four or five brown cardboard boxes on the back seat of their damaged car and the pair were ‘tampering with them - ripping labels off’.
Asked by the prosecutor what happened when the men ‘split’, he said ‘the one with the sliders’ went up Wellington Road and the other went south along Wellington Road behind the library.
He said he had been verbally abused by the one wearing the sliders.
Asked why he thought he had been abused, the witness said: “Just because I was on the phone reporting it.”
Under cross-examination by Stephen Kamlish QC, defending Hashem Abedi, he said he could not recall whether the man had tried to remove the bumper.
The witness said he remembered the bumper ripped off and the males were trying to drive away.
The QC suggested the boxes were in the rear of the car and not on the back seat, and Mr Cooper said he thought they were ‘just in the back’.
“I noticed them doing something to the boxes,” he said.
The jurors also heard from the witnesses then partner, who also saw the crash.
She told the jury: “We were walking from Withington and walking down the road and saw a car which was meant to stop but didn’t. It hit another car and the lady in the car span around.
“It was quite a big collision. It all happened really quickly.”
She said said she was ‘a bit shocked’ and she ran over to see if the lady was OK.
She said she saw another car and two males.
She told the jury that when they were calling the police one of the males said ‘no, no’ and called her partner ‘pussy’.
“It was strange in a way because you would think they would ask if the lady was OK, but they didn’t. They just stayed in the car,” she said.
She said she saw plain cardboard boxes in the car and the males were ‘taking things off them’.
The boxes were in the boot of the car and the boot was open while this happened, she said.
She said that after her partner had been abused there had been no more conversation with the males.
She said she wasn’t sure which one had abused her partner but she said the taller one with the greyer skin was the driver and he also had a thin moustache.
One of the males ran towards Withington while the other stayed in the car even though it was ‘quite damaged’ and he ‘tried to put the car back together a little bit and drive off’.
But the male who remained didn’t manage to drive off and ran off in the opposite direction, she told the jury.
“None of them spoke to the lady to see if she’s OK and that’s what stuck with us,”she said.
Police arrived at the scene of the crash and the Aygo was later removed to be scrapped, the jurors were told.
February 18, Day 10
(Image: GMP)
Behind the scenes and away from the jury, Hashem Abedi complained to his QC about the length of the court day, saying he had hardly slept.
In court, the jurors heard details about how Hashem and Salman Abedi used an empty terraced house in Rusholme as a delivery address for chemicals to make explosives, having duped contacts into ordering sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide.
The jurors were reminded that, after the brothers had crashed the Toyota Aygo on March 23, 2017, two months before the bombing, a Hyundai Sonata was purchased for £290 at an auction the following day.
The jurors were told the accused and his brother used the Aygo and the replacement vehicle to move chemicals to a 12th floor flat at Somerton Court in Blackley where, according to the prosecution, TATP was manufactured.
(Image: PA)
The jurors were told that the first of two parcels containing 20 litres of hydrogen peroxide was delivered to an address at Lindum Street in Rusholme on March 27, 2017, and signed for by ‘YAYA’.
Later a phone attributed to Hashem Abedi texted a number attributed to a contact which read: “Alsalam send me online dets so he can drop doe asap’.
The second part of the hydrogen peroxide order was delivered to the address on March 31, the court heard.
The jurors were read a witness statement from one resident of the street, Linda Travis, who described young men coming to the property with suitcases being brought in and out.
Ms Travis said she had accepted deliveries which were addressed to the property when no-one was there, recalling she had kept one item on her sofa for a few days and then delivered it to an Asian male who turned up at the property.
The male did not speak and simply took the parcel from her, she said.
The man at the address must have had a shower as he was still wet, she said.
An email address ‘bedab7jeana@gmail.com’ - created via free public WiFi at Hulme Market - was used to set up an Amazon account which was used to order 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide for £92.47, which was delivered to the Lindum Street property on April 6, 2017, the jurors were told.
Earlier in the trial, the prosecution said ‘bedab7jeana’ translates from Arabic to ‘to slaughter we have come’ or ‘we have come to slaughter’.
Within ten minutes of the Amazon account being set up, it was used to purchase 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide for £92.47 with a customer name of ‘John O’Brian’.
The trial was adjourned early for the day when one of the jurors reported feeling unwell.
Hashem Abedi’s QC Stephen Kamlish said client had struggled to sleep and cope with the length of the court day. In the dock, he showed no sign of being weary, but his barrister said he was struggling to concentrate, 'stressed for obvious reasons', and asked if the court could sit for ‘shorter days’.
The judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, acknowledged the request but made no concessions. He stood and left court, appearing to have put the defendant and his request in their place.
February 18, Day 11
(Image: Getty Images)
Even though he showed no sign of fatigue in the dock, Abedi’s QC again complained the defendant was finding it ‘exceedingly difficult’ to follow the proceedings before the jurors were brought into court.
Abedi woke at 5am and was ‘fed briefly’ in his cell before beginning the process all Category A prisoners at HMP Belmarsh go through before they are brought to court, his lawyer said.
He was getting tired and was ‘flagging’ towards the end of a day of court, said Mr Kamlish, repeating his client’s request to have shorter days. The judge simply noted that the defendant was experiencing a typical working day.
The families and police officers watching the proceedings - among them Chief Constable Ian Hopkins - can’t have been impressed.
Again, the judge appeared to reject the request and called the jurors in to continue the trial proper.
The jurors, when they were brought into court, were told about the movements of the accused and his brother as they attempted to source chemicals for their bomb in the weeks before the attack.
Analyst Morwenna Cross, giving evidence for the prosecution, described the movements of phones attributed to Salman Abedi and his brother Hashem.
She told the jurors about the movements of phones across Greater Manchester as well as the movements of a Toyota Aygo and later a Hyundai Sonata said to have been used to ferry chemicals to and from the 12th floor apartment in Blackley where TATP (triacetone triperoxide) was made between February and April 2017.
Ms Cross took the jurors through the movements of mobile phones attributed to the brothers, using mobile phone ‘cell site analysis’ which can plot how and when mobiles access the phone network and internet, as well as the movements of two cars that were said to have been part of the plot.
She described how the phones and the cars appeared to move between the Abedi family home in Fallowfield and other places around Greater Manchester, including Somerton Court in Blackley.
The pair used a Toyota Aygo car to move chemicals until it was involved in the crash on March 23 from which they fled.
The court heard they used a Hyundai Sonata purchased at Radcliffe Car Auctions the next day.
Ms Cross took the jurors through a series of pictures taken by ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras which showed the cars heading into and out of Manchester.
February 18, Day 12
(Image: M.E.N.)
Salman Abedi urged a student ‘do chemistry so you can build a bomb’ and described jihad as ‘beautiful’, the jury heard.
A teenage associate said he started laughing when he heard the comments as he didn’t take them seriously.
In the months after the comments Salman Abedi carried out the Arena suicide bombing.
The jurors heard evidence from a teenage associate of the Abedi brothers, a student, who described hearing Salman Abedi express support for ‘jihad’.
In a police video interview played in court, the witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons recalled a trip in Hashem Abedi’s car when Salman Abedi was also on board.
Salman Abedi, according to the witness, had said: “Do chemistry so you can build a bomb.”
The Arena bomber had talked about ‘martyring’, how being a martyr was ‘something big’ and that ‘jihad is beautiful’, the jurors were told.
The young witness said he ‘didn’t used to think he was an inspiration in any way shape or form’ and that he actually thought Salman Abedi was ‘a bit dopey’.
He said he ‘started laughing’ when he heard the comment and that Salman Abedi may also have laughed too.
“To be honest even if he had said to me ‘I’m going to build a bomb’ I wouldn’t have believed him. That’s how insane it is, you know what I mean?” said the witness, who went on that he did not believe the Abedi family was ‘that type’.
He told the interviewing police officers that Salman Abedi would tell stories ‘about prophets’ and had told him: “Life’s temporary, make sure you don’t get lost.”
The court heard that Salman Abedi had told the young associate: “Die with no judging and you go straight to heaven.”
Salman Abedi had previously associated with a gang of Libyans from Moss Side known as ‘The L Squad’, according to the witness. He had seen him playing football and ‘his lads were bad boys’.
Later, the jurors heard from another witness, who said he had lived at the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfied in August 2015.
(Image: GMP)
He had known Hashem Abedi from Burnage High School, he said.
He told the court that during a meal at the Abedi home Salman Abedi had ‘shown empathy’ to ISIS during a TV news story on Iraq and had complained about how the media had ‘attacked’ them.
He said Hashem Abedi was ‘in agreement’ with his brother although others at the dinner had disagreed.
The jurors were told the Abedi family had plans to leave the country and that the next time he saw them was in April 2017 when he was sent to their home by his father in Libya to collect some post.
Asked about the brothers’ appearance, he said: “I was a little surprised. At the time I was living there Salman was going to the gym. In April he had lost quite a lot of weight. He was wearing traditional Islamic clothing.”
Under cross-examination by Stephen Kamlish QC, defending Hashem Abedi, it was suggested that he could not recall his client saying anything for or against ISIS and that others had made the comments.
The witness accepted that ‘could be true’.
February 20, Day 13
A friend of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi told a jury he had nothing to do with the plot.
Jurors heard the university student, a member of the city’s Libyan community who knew Abedi from school, had been suspected by detectives of helping the bomber and his brother Hashem buy the Nissan Micra used to store explosives, before looking after it when they flew out of Manchester the month before the attack.
The witness admitted he helped the brothers purchase the car but insisted: “I can say one billion per cent I was never tasked to look after the Micra.”
The jurors heard he was arrested and interviewed a number of times following the bombing but was released without charge.
In a statement he made to the police which was read out in court, the man said he knew the battered old Micra was parked in Rusholme because Salman Abedi had told him so.
The court heard the brothers, when they realised flights had been arranged for them to leave the UK for Libya in April 2017, bought the Micra at short notice and then used it to store the explosives they had made in Blackley, parking the vehicle up near a block of flats, Devell House, in Rusholme.
(Image: GMP)
When the car was found by the police two weeks after the bombing, the jurors were told traces of TATP explosive were found in the boot as well as bags of screws and nails and more than ten litres of sulphuric acid.
The witness said in his statement: “I never knew Salman had returned to the UK and I was shocked to find out he was the Manchester Arena bomber.”
He said he had not been involved in the attack and had ‘no idea’ what Salman Abedi had been planning.
The witness said: “Salman was a really good friend of mine. We used to go to the gym and play five-a-side football together.”
He said his friend ‘became more religious’ while he said he spent more time ‘chilling and smoking and generally having a good time going out’.
He admitted he had helped the brothers by finding the Micra on Gumtree and then going with them to a test drive and buy the car from the vendor in Droylsden.
When he asked Salman Abedi why he needed a car when they were about to fly out of the country, he admitted his friend gave a ‘vague answer’.
He said he knew the area where the car had been parked up because it was where he purchased cannabis.
The witness said he was revising for his university exams on May 23, 2017, when he saw that Salmam Abedi had been named as the person responsible for the bombing.
“I thought s**t, what did they do with that car?”
The witness said that as a result he drove straight away to Rusholme, parked at a petrol station and looked at the car park of Devell House and saw that the Micra was still there.
He said he felt ‘relieved’ when he saw the car still there because he thought it had been used in the bombing.
But he said he didn’t tell the police about the Micra as his boss had advised him not to.
He admitted he changed his phone number a few days later but said he had done so because he had received ‘too many calls from the media asking about my relationship with Salman’.
He confirmed that in February 2015 he visited Abdalraouf Abdallah in HMP Belmarsh with Salman Abedi. The jurors have previously heard that Abdallah was later convicted of terror crimes.
He described it as a ‘social visit’ and that he only visited him once whilst he was on remand accused of terrorism offences.
February 20, Day 14
(Image: GMP)
Jurors were shown CCTV of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi arriving from Libya four days before he exploded the IED in his rucksack.
They were shown CCTV footage of Salman Abedi arriving back at Terminal 3 at Manchester Airport on the morning of May 18, 2017.
He had flown in from Libya via Istanbul and Dusseldorf.
The footage showed Salman Abedi queuing with other arriving passengers, with no hold luggage but a rucksack.
He visited WH Smiths in the terminal building where he purchased a mobile phone sim card and around the same time called his gran in Libya, the jurors were told.
The court heard he then made his way to the airport’s bus station where he caught a bus to Wythenshawe.
From there, the jurors were told, he booked a taxi under the name ‘Sal’ , before taking a Skoda Octavia from outside Wythenshawe police station taxi to Rusholme.
More footage shown to the jury showed him examining the Nissan Micra where he had stored the explosives before flying to Libya, parked outside a block of flats, Devell House, in Rusholme.
The footage showed Salman Abedi near Oxney House and Gardens and at the Micra for two two minutes and he could be seen lifting the boot.
He then took another taxi to Manchester and later met the landlady of a third floor one-bed apartment at Granby Row in Manchester City centre.
The prosecution say this was where he finally constructed his IED.
CCTV showed Salman Abedi climbing the stairs to the property with the landlady.
In a statement read to the court, she confirmed she had advertised the property on Gumtree and that she had been called by a man from Libya who identified himself as ‘Sam Abdi’.
She met him at the apartment in the afternoon of May 18, 2017, the jurors were told.
She said she offered to shake the man’s hand and that he shook her hand while still holding a mobile phone.
“I thought this was a religious thing and he didn’t want to touch my hand,” she said.
(Image: GMP)
The man told him he was called Sam Abdi and was studying at Salford University.
She said she showed ‘Sam’ around the apartment and that she got the impression he ‘wasn’t particularly interested’ as he was asking no questions and made no positive comment.
She said it ‘took me by surprise’ when he decided to rent it.
They agreed £775 for two weeks and ‘Sam’ paid her £600 cash as he said he didn’t have the rest, the jurors were told.
She counted the money and gave him the key, she said.
She asked him to write down his home address and email on a piece of paper. He gave an address in Moss Side and a Hotmail address which had been created in Libya and had been accessed only twice, the jurors were told.
The landlady said 'Sam' said he would get his car and she showed him the basement and where the bins were.
She explained it was another £10 a week for a parking space and he agreed.
The witness said she texted ‘Sam’ on May 23 to ask if he wanted more than two weeks and when she had no reply she emailed him with a copy of the invoice.
She said she saw on the news on May 25 the name Salman Abedi as the person responsible for the bombing, and she recalled thinking it was similar to ‘Sam Abdi’.
She said she googled ‘Salman Abedi’ and a series of images came up.
She said she ‘instantly recognised’ it was the same man to whom she had rented her apartment.
“I was in complete shock and I could not believe the person responsible for the atrocity was staying in my apartment before he carried out this attack,” she said.
February 24, Day 15
The jurors saw footage of Salman Abedi carrying out three reconnaissance missions at the venue before his deadly attack.
Salman Abedi returned to Manchester Airport, via Istanbul and Dusseldorf, from Libya, on the morning of May 18, 2017, first taking a bus to Wythenshawe and then taking a taxi back to Rusholme to check on the Micra.
(Image: GMP)
Tthe jurors were shown CCTV of Salman Abedi carrying out reconnaissance at the Arena on the day he flew back into Manchester, the first of three scoping exercises before he carried out his attack.
CCTV played to the jury showed him walking by a long queue of people at the box office and then standing and looking at concert-goers who were on their way to a Take That gig at the venue on the evening of May 18, before going on to buy batteries and a large Kangol suitcase from the Arndale Centre.
He detonated his bomb days later close to the same spot, killing 22 and injuring hundreds more.
The jurors saw footage from the following day, May 19, which showed him visiting the Nissan Micra car parked up in Rusholme - the vehicle the brothers are said to have purchased hastily to store TATP explosives when they left the country a month earlier.
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Footage from later that day showed him struggling to carry the heavy suitcase - by now said to be weighed down with explosives - into the apartment at Granby Row.
Footage showed Salman Abedi making a series of shopping trips to Screwfix on the Piccadilly trading estate from where he purchased more than 5,000 nuts to use as shrapnel, and to Manchester Merchants in Cheetham Hill, from where the jury heard he purchased a large money tin with a £5 note design which was used to make the bomb.
He also went to Sports Direct to buy a 65 litre Karrimor Bobcat rucksack used to carry the device.
(Image: GMP)
More footage was played from the following day which showed Salman Abedi on more shopping trips. He purchased 3,000 screws as well as dowels, nuts and a 25 litre swing bin, a spade, a saw, four packets of Gorilla glue, a packet of Gorilla tape, three wallpaper bags, a set of two drawers and two oak-effect doors at B&Q in Cheetham Hill, the jurors were told.
B&Q shop assistant Steven Dooley, in a statement read to the court, said he thought Abedi was a shoplifter.
When police visited him in the wake of the bombing, Mr Dooley said he ‘put two and two together and thought that maybe it was linked to what happened at the Arena’.
The jurors were shown footage of a second visit Salman Abedi made to the Arena on May 21, 2017.
One still showed him sitting on a wall at the bottom of a flight of stairs up towards the foyer and then later looking down the stairs, at around 7pm, before returning to the apartment at Granby Row.
The jurors also saw footage of a third and final reconnaissance mission at around 6.30pm on the day of the attack - CCTV played in court showed him appearing to speak to a member of security staff and then leaving in a black cab about seven minutes after he arrived.
The court heard he made a series of calls and texts to an unknown number in Libya and, at 7pm, he was sent two texts, the first saying ‘call’ and the second saying ‘asap’.
Footage from earlier that day showed Salman Abedi wheeling the blue suitcase along the back streets of Manchester - the jurors have been told it was never recovered by police.
February 25, Day 16
(Image: PA)
A tough day for families watching in remote courtrooms up and down the country and the jury.
Hashem Abedi watched impassively from the dock as the court was shown CCTV of the final moments before his brother Salman detonated the bomb in his backpack and told shocking details of the injuries inflicted.
CCTV of Salman Abedi just 19 seconds before he detonated his device was shown.
Wearing a cap and carrying a heavy bomb in his rucksack, the footage showed him mingling with concert-goers as they left the Arena at 10.30pm on May 22, 2017.
Moments later he detonated the device while standing in the middle of the foyer, killing himself and 22 others as well as seriously injuring dozens more.
The jurors were told horrific details of the life-changing injuries suffered by some of the 359 people.
Aside from the 22 who died, 92 were seriously injured but survived, including one woman, 51, who broke both her legs in the blast but who also suffered shrapnel wounds in the 1996 IRA bombing of Manchester.
The jurors were shown CCTV footage of Salman Abedi’s final movements on the day of the bombing.
Wearing a heavy Karrimor rucksack, he was seen leaving the apartment at Granby Row in Manchester city centre - where he is said to have assembled the device - before taking a black cab to Shudehill where he took a tram for the short journey to Victoria railway station.
The jurors were told he twice called the Abedi family home in Libya, one of the calls lasting four minutes and 12 seconds.
He was seen on more footage sitting on benches before going to the public toilets in the Arena for 19 minutes.
Salman Abedi then returned to Victoria station where he was seen on a bench on the Metrolink platform before returning for the last time to the Arena.
The jurors were told he remained out of view of any cameras for an hour and then returned to detonate the device, as the foyer was filling with people, at 10.31pm.
One CCTV still, taken 19 seconds before the blast, showed Salman Abedi in the centre of the foyer as it filled with people.
(Image: GMP)
The jurors were told about desperate attempts to resuscitate the injured and how a ‘triage medical station’ was set up at the railway station as armed police checked for any secondary devices.
A map of exactly where those who died were at the time of the explosion was shown the jury, illustrating how those closest were just two metres from the bomber while the furthest was more than 20 metres away.
The jurors heard Salman Abedi was dismembered and decapitated in the blast, with some of his clothing later being found on the ceiling of the foyer.
He was identified in part thanks to DNA which matched DNA taken from him during an arrest for shoplifting in 2012. A Halifax bank card featuring his name was found near the box office windows.
Almost 3,000 screws, nuts and bolts were found at the scene, embedded in walls, an advertising poster and in the bodies of victims. More were found during a renovation of the Arena in 2019, the jurors were told.
A Showsec supervisor, in a statement read to the court, said he first noticed a flash and saw the explosion.
“The next thing I knew I was on the concourse. I didn’t know how I ended up getting there,” he said.
He said he learned later that he had been knocked unconscious and had been carried to the concourse.
He said he went to the foyer ‘to see if I could help’ and that he only realised later, when he arrived home, that he had been injured.
February 26, Day 17
(Image: GMP)
Hashem Abedi missed the entire day - the jurors were told that he was in the cells talking to his legal team while the jurors were shown pictures of the Arena attack.
Salman Abedi left a note at the rented flat where he assembled the bomb to apologise to the landlady for leaving ‘any mess’, the jury was told.
He scrawled the note on a piece of kitchen roll which he left on a counter in the kitchen of the city centre flat he had rented in a false name before going to the Arena to detonate the bomb in his backpack.
(Image: GMP)
The court heard details of police searches carried out at the Granby Row apartment and other sites across the city in the aftermath of the bombing.
They were shown a picture of a hand-written note from ‘Sam’ found on the kitchen counter in the one-bed apartment at Granby House, where the prosecution say Salman Abedi assembled the device.
It read: “Sorry if there is anything missing in the apartment or any mess made the extra 150 and the rest of the week’s rent can hopefully cover it. “Sam”.”
Despite booking it for two weeks, he had only been in the apartment for four days by the time he carried out the attack at the Arena.
Traces of TATP explosives were found in two bin bags in the basement, the court heard.
Other ‘significant’ finds were made at Somerton Court, Blackley, and at the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfield.
(Image: GMP)
In the bins outside the home, officers found ID cards for both brothers for pilgrimages to Mecca as well as a scrap of paper with a hand-written email address ‘bedab7jeana@gmail.com’.
The jurors had previously heard that the address translates to ‘to slaughter we come’ in Arabic and was used to purchase one of the ‘precursor chemicals’ for the manufacture of TATP from Amazon, namely 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide.
Other images were shown in court of cut up pieces of retail-sized Pride vegetable oil tins found in the bins and in the garden shed at the family home - attempts to make prototype parts for a bomb.
Inside the house, police found a series of electrical items such as a circuit board, transistors, an engineering text book and batteries in the box room at the house as well as hand-written notes and diagrams about power and electronics on the landing.
The jurors were shown pictures of three plastic containers inside a San Francisco 49ers hold-all which were all said to contained concentrated sulphuric acid, another of the ‘precursor chemicals’ for TATP.
Nails and screws were also found in the car, with traces of TATP detected on the driver’s seat.
(Image: GMP)
The jurors were also told about the discovery of two passports, one British and one Libyan, in the name of Salman Abedi found in a Nike bag abandoned under a railway arch on Fairfield Street near Piccadilly railway station.
CCTV played to the jury showed Salman Abedi carrying a small bag through Manchester city centre on the day of the bombing.
He is also seen dragging a large blue Kangol suitcase - which he used to transport items from the Micra to the Granby Row apartment when he returned alone from Libya.
The jurors were told that the suitcase was dumped near bins on Ebden Street in the city centre and taken a tip in Gorton from where it could have gone to an incinerator in Runcorn or a larger tip at Pilsworth near Bury.
Despite a huge search of the Pilsworth tip featuring 2,205 police man hours, the suitcase was never discovered, the jurors heard.
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February 27, Day 18
No sign of Hashem Abedi in the dock for the second day - this time the jurors are given no explanation beyond what they were told the day before.
Before they came into court, Abedi’s junior counsel said his client wanted to remain with his solicitors in the cells. He had been ‘advised’ about failing to appear in the dock but decided to ignore the advice and stick a figurative two fingers up at the trial.
When the jurors were finally brought into court, they were shown a mock-up of the devastating improvised explosive device that killed 22 people.
They saw a 65 litre Karrimor rucksack similar to one used in the attack with a large money tin inside it packed with 30 kilos of shrapnel surrounding a paint tin.
The paint tin on the real device was stuffed with up to five kilos of home-made explosives.
The jurors heard scientific evidence about the pieces of bomb-damaged metal that were found at the venue in the aftermath of the bomb and how the explosives and device were constructed.
Explosives expert Lorna Philp told the jurors the device was constructed using a large money tin featuring a £5 note design on the outside, a five-litre paint tin and ‘an extremely large quantity of shrapnel of nuts and screws’.
She concluded the explosive charge was TATP and a detonator was made using a drinks can.
The jurors were shown images of pieces of a switch found at the Arena used to set off the bomb as well as photos of pieces of tin and wire found at the scene.
Ms Philp, having seen CCTV of the blast, said she believed the switch was in Salman Abedi’s jacket pocket.
The expert estimated up to five kilos of TATP - an ‘extremely sensitive primary high explosive’ - were used in the device although she added she could not give an accurate figure.
She agreed with a suggestion from the Crown’s prosecutor Duncan Penny QC that 27 kilos of nuts and 1.5 kilos of screws were recovered from the Arena.
(Image: GMP)
Asked what the purpose of shrapnel was, she said: “The only reason to add shrapnel to an IED is to cause injury to persons within the vicinity when the device functions.”
A mock-up of the device the Crown say was used in the attack was brought into court and shown to the jurors.
Up to six kilos of TATP could have been manufactured from the known amount of chemicals which had been purchased in the months before the bombing, the court heard.
Ms Philp detailed exactly how TATP is made and how the process can take between 24 and 48 hours depending on the circumstances.
She said one theory was that it was manufactured at Somerton Court, stored in the Micra and then moved to the Granby House where the process of manufacture was completed before the device was assembled.
She agreed it could have been dried out on ‘carpet protector’ laid out on the floor at the Granby House apartment.
She said it was also possible the TATP could have been manufactured in one large batch at Granby House although it would have been ‘more hazardous’ and could have resulted in an accidental detonation.
She said it would have been possible to manufacture the TATP in smaller batches over a longer period of time.
Abedi’s QC didn't ask a single question in cross-examination.
February 28, Day 19
Before the jurors came into court, the defence told the judge their client had ‘chosen not to’ attend the proceedings.
So it came as a surprise to everyone when Hashem Abedi suddenly appeared up the stairs into the court to hear legal argument in the absence of the jury.
The defence tried to stop the jury seeing an infamous Islamic State video detailing how to construct a bomb made from TATP published online by ISIS in late 2016. But the judge allowed it.
The prosecution admitted they had no evidence to say the brothers definitely viewed the footage but they pointed to ‘startling similarities’ between the device made on the video and the final Arena bomb.
Stephen Kamlish, defending, said ‘it's not evidence at all’, didn’t prove anything and should be ruled out.
He said there was a danger that the jury would conclude that the defendant must have seen the video and that would ‘prejudice’ his client.
But the judge sided with the prosecution and the video was shown to the jury.
The clip played to the jury showed a masked jihadi wearing white gloves carefully making TATP in a kitchen, using household products, with an icon of an Islamic State flag in one corner of the screen.
Speaking in Arabic but with English subtitles, the man casually describes how some of the items required can be obtained in the shops and that you should wear a mask to make the volatile explosive TATP, referred to as ‘white ice’.
“Only prepare this shortly before an operation,” the masked figure said. The device would be detonated ‘with Allah’s permission’, he said.
Step-by-step instructions were given on how to manufacture both the explosive and the detonators using rolled up pieces of aluminium from a soft drinks can.
The precise nature of the detonators used in the Arena bomb was never established from what was found at the scene, explosives expert Lorna Philp told the court. However, one significant clue that the brothers were inspired by this video came from the fact that the remains of two drinks cans were found strewn around the bomb-damaged foyer, she said.
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The jurors also learned fingerprints of Hashem Abedi were found on cut up pieces of tin at the family home.
The brothers’ prints were found on the inside and outside surfaces of pieces cut from six oil drums found in the shed, bins and garden of the family home in Fallowfield, the court heard.
The jurors heard evidence from forensic scientist Paul Ryder who examined fragments of tin that were uncovered by police following the explosion.
Several pieces from one of the retail-sized Pride vegetable oil drums were found at the Abedi family home on Elsmore Road in Fallowfield and others were found in the Granby House apartment, Mr Ryder told the court.
One piece from the same tin was also found lodged in a piece of green fabric - said to have been a part of the final IED - in the arena foyer following the bombing.
The jurors were also shown an animation which showed how these pieces fitted together to form one tin, although the jurors were told not all of this drum was found.
Fingerprints from both Hashem and Salman Abedi were found on the inside and outside of a number of pieces of cut metal from the six drums, five of them Pride vegetable oil drums and one of them a KTC brand of oil, the court was told.
The prosecution say the cut pieces of tin were early experiments for making prototype parts of a bomb.
March 3, Day 20
Hashem Abedi wasn't in the dock for the third day - this time he wasn't even in the building and refused to leave Belmarsh prison.
Before the jurors were brought into court, his QC Stephen Kamlish said he’d spoken to his client on the phone and that Hashem Abedi wasn’t in court because he was ‘unwell’.
The prison had ordered his client to be seen by a psychologist or psychiatrist, said the QC.
“He says this morning he made an effort. He left his cell and went to the search area and could not carry on. He says he was feeling exhausted,” said Mr Kamlish, going on that his client had been discussing with his legal team whether he could ‘carry on’.
Abedi had been ‘showing some forbearance’ and was trying to be ‘responsible’.
“But he says the point has come where he just feels he cannot come in. He says he’s getting flashbacks,” said Mr Kamlish
The QC said his client ‘had virtually no sleep last night’.
“He’s just reaching the point where he’s overwhelmed by it all,” he said.
(Image: GMP)
The defendant had told him it was ‘very doubtful’ he would be able to come to court tomorrow, said Mr Kamlish adding that his view was that his client would not be able to come into court for the next two days.
His client, when asked, had said he did not want the trial to proceed in his absence, added the QC, saying that he thought his client should ‘see and hear’ upcoming fingerprint evidence rather than merely having read the prosecution papers.
Duncan Penny QC, prosecuting, agreed it was ‘important evidence’ coming up, covering fingerprints and DNA.
The judge said he ‘required’ the defendant to attend court in the morning and said it was ‘of the utmost importance’ that the defendant was seen by someone at the prison today.
The jurors were brought back and told by the judge that with Hashem Abedi feeling unwell, the proceedings would be adjourned for the day.
March 4, day 21
Hashem Abedi was brought to the Old Bailey - but refused to come into court again, alleging he had been beaten up by prison guards.
Before the jurors were brought into court, his QC, Stephen Kamlish, asked the judge for the court’s own nurse to see his ‘upset’ client, who, he alleged, had been brought to court against his will and beaten up by guards who forced him into the prison van and punched him, even though they had 'no power' to compel him to court.
Abedi had been given 5g of Valium the night before and another 5g in the morning leaving him ‘relaxed but very sleepy’, the barrister added.
“I’m not criticising anybody. The fact is the officers must have believed that… in refusing to come with them they were entitled to use certain force and that’s what happened,” said Mr Kamlish.
"Although now in the building, his client was not coming into court because ‘he does not feel well enough and nor does he feel able to concentrate on matters of importance’, Mr Kamlish said.
Abedi was ‘getting flashbacks’, was hardly sleeping and had not eaten today as he had been removed from his cell, said the QC.
After an adjournment the court’s nurse saw the defendant for 45 minutes and reported back to the judge that he was fit to attend court.
The evidence finally resumed at 2pm when the jurors heard from GMP fingerprint expert Philip Balduini.
The jurors were told a piece of metal found at the arena following the 2017 terror attack was linked to Hashem Abedi.
The strip found was found lodged in a piece of green fabric in the arena foyer after Salman Abedi detonated an improvised explosive device.
The cloth had been used to cover the top of the device inside his backpack.
The jurors were told that the small strip of metal found in the foyer was from a Pride vegetable oil tin and that other pieces of the same drum were found at the Abedi family home in Fallowfield and at the city centre flat where the bomb was assembled.
Hashem Abedi’s finger and palm prints were found on the pieces of the oil drum, used to make prototype bomb parts, found at his home and the city centre flat.
Mr Balduini told the jury a series of finger and palm prints from both the defendant and Salman Abedi were found on scraps of metal found at the family home on Elsmore Road.
The court heard that most of one of the drums was found at the family home but six pieces of the same tin were found at the city centre flat where the Arena device was assembled, on Granby Row.
One of the pieces from this tin was found at the Arena following the bombing.
An animation played in court showed pieces of the part of the oil tin found at Elsmore Road folded with tape wrapped around it to fashion another container, with a lid cut from another tin placed into the base.
Ten of Hashem Abedi’s finger and palm prints were found on the inside and outside of this improvised container, the jurors were told.
Two more of his prints were on both sides of a lid from another tin found inside the improvised container, the court heard.
The jurors were told the six pieces of the same vegetable oil tin were found rolled up in a blue plastic bag in the basement at Granby Row.
Four of the defendant’s prints were found on these six pieces.
When the jurors were sent home for the day, the judge reminded Abedi - who was by now back in the dock and looking perfectly fit and healthy - that he was ‘required to be here in the morning’. Abedi nodded.
March 5, day 22
Hashem Abedi arrived at the building but wouldn't come into court. His defence said he’d prefer to remain with his legal team, although all of them seemed to be in court.
When the jurors were brought in, they heard more evidence that Hashem Abedi’s fingerprints were left all over items he used to make and store an improvised explosive device.
The prints were found on cut up pieces of vegetable oil tin manipulated to make parts for an earlier version of the device found in the shed and bins of the family home in Fallowfield, the court heard.
Jurors were told they were also found in the flat Blackley and the Nissan Micra.
GMP fingerprint expert Philip Balduini was back in court and told the jurors details of the defendant’s palm and fingerprints found at the Abedi family home on cut-up pieces of vegetable oil tins.
They were also said to have been found on a rolled up document uncovered in the attic at the Abedi home featuring a list of questions about electricity and also on A4 sized hand-drawn diagram of electrical circuits titled ‘3 minute alarm’ found in an upstairs boxroom.
The defendant’s prints were also found at the 12th floor flat at Somerton Court in Blackley where the TATP was made.
(Image: PA)
His thumbprint was on a door to the metre cupboard while prints from his right hand were found on the divan drawer, the jurors were told.
His prints were also said to have been found the living room door frame, a piece of plastic tracking beside it and a nearby light switch.
Hashem Abedi’s prints were also found in the terraced house on Lindum Street in Rusholme which was used as a delivery address for bomb-making chemicals, and in the Micra which was found parked up near Devell House in Rusholme in the days after the bombing.
The court heard his prints were on: two plastic containers inside a San Francisco 49rs hold-all in the rear of the car; on a small plastic container found on the rear seats; on three large blue plastic drums on the back seats; on three boxes of nails found inside one of the blue drums; on some of the seven packs of nails found in another of the blue drums.
On that Thursday afternoon, having heard little evidence, the jurors were sent home for a long weekend.
The judge makes his displeasure at the defendant’s failure to appear in the dock clear, saying he expected the defendant to be in the dock, not just in the court building, on Monday.
March 9, Day 23
Hashem Abedi refused to leave his cell at HMP Belmarsh claiming again that he was ‘unwell’.
The judge said he had been told that the defendant had been involved in an incident at the prison ‘last Sunday’ involving ‘disruption if not a degree of violence’ which had resulted in ‘privileges’ being withdrawn.
His defence counsel Stephen Kamlish QC confirmed to the court his client now had only one phone call a day to speak to his solicitors.
The judge said that given the medical evidence they had had so far ‘it doesn’t seem to me there’s any justification for his non-appearance over and above his choice that he does not wish to attend’.
More than an hour late, the trial proper resumes at 11.30am with GMP fingerprint expert Philip Balduini completing his evidence, telling the jurors that Hashem Abedi’s prints were found on the six rolled up metal cylinders the Crown recovered from the basement at Granby Row.
The Crown said these were attempts to fashion detonators from cut up pieces of oil drum.
The DNA Hashem Abedi was found at Granby Row and in the old Nissan Micra in which bomb-making equipment was transported and stored, a forensic scientist told the jury.
It was found on bedding, curtains and a sleeping bag dumped in a bin room at an apartment block in Blackley, on a bathroom door-handle at a terraced house in Rusholme said to have been used as a delivery address for chemicals and on items found in the Micra used to transport and store bomb-equipment, jurors were told.
Although his DNA wasn’t found at a city centre apartment, his fingerprints were found on six metal cylinders dumped in the basement, jurors were told.
Forensic scientist Geraldine Davidson told the jury that the defendant’s DNA was found at Somerton Court, at Lindum Street in Rusholme and in the Micra which was found a week after the bombing parked up in Rusholme.
Ms Davidson, who analysed 450 items, told the jurors there was ‘extremely strong support’ that DNA profiles found on bedding and curtains dumped in a bin room at Somerton Court had been provided by Hashem and Salman Abedi, adding that this meant there was a one-in-a-million chance these profiles had come from someone else.
DNA linked to Salman Abedi was also found in a pillow case recovered from the bin room while there was also ‘extremely strong support’ for a mixed profile found on a sleeping bag belonging to brother Hashem, the witness told the court.
More DNA linked to Salman Abedi was found in a washing machine in the kitchen and on a living room plug socket, the jurors were told.
His DNA was also found on the TV on-off switch and on a fuse box in a cupboard.
Profiles linked to Hashem Abedi’s DNA were found a front seat adjuster and a bottle of Levi Roots Caribbean Crush drink in the Micra, the court heard.
His DNA was also said to have been on a blue drums recovered from the rear seat and on a B&Q hammer in the rear footwell of the car.
A mixed profile found in a San Francisco 49ers holdall recovered from the car provided ‘extremely strong support’ for Salman Abedi having contributed to the profile, the court heard.
A profile from a brown sock inside the hold-all provided ‘extremely strong support’ for Salman Abedi contributing to it, according to Ms Davidson.
The expert said there was a one in a billion possibility that the profile found in the sock belonged to someone other than Salman Abedi.
The jurors were then played an animation showing all the forensic evidence obtained from the Nissan Micra, both DNA and fingerprint.
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The expert also outlined how Salman Abedi’s DNA was found at or near the apartment at Granby House.
After the jurors left court, the judge confirms a doctor has seen the defendant during the afternoon and confirmed he is fit to attend the trial.
Abedi’s junior counsel, Richard Thomas, said that, contrary to reports earlier in the day, his client would be attending court in the morning.
March 10, Day 24
Hashem Abedi wasn't n the dock again - and had decided he ‘no longer wishes to participate in the trial’, his QC told the judge.
His QC says Abedi had been ‘fully advised’ but he had made his decision.
After another delay of about 30 minutes, the jurors were brought in. There was no mention of the absent defendant.
The jurors were read the last of the ‘agreed facts’
The first concerned the email address ‘bedab7jeana@gmail.com’ which was used to purchase 30 litres of hydrogen peroxide.
The agreed fact read to the jury states: “The expression ‘we come to slaughter’ has become a widely used slogan, as a threat to potential opponents, in Salafi-Jihadi circles (those with religious political ideology based on a belief in jihad in the form of physical violence as well as fundamentalist Sunni Islamic beliefs).
“For instance, Katibat Al-Battar Al-Libi, an armed group operating in Syria, chose it as its slogan when it formed in 2012. The group was made up predominantly of Libyans but also others from North Africa.”
The jurors hear that Hashem Abedi told police ‘I could never had envisaged that my brother had it in him to do this to innocent people’.
He declined to answer questions following his extradition from Libya in 2019 but denied any involvement in his brother Salman’s 2017 suicide bombing at the Arena in a prepared statement he gave to officers, the court heard.
He claimed he had been tortured in Libya.
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The jurors were told he had refused to answer questions during four police interviews following his extradition from Libya where he was held by a militia.
But the court heard that, in a prepared statement given to officers, he said: “I deny any involvement in the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena on the 22 May 2017. I was not involved in the instigation preparation or commission of it. The first I heard of it was on the 23 May, a few hours before I was arrested by the FTS in Libya. Had I had any idea of it I would have reported it to my mother initially and then to other family members to prevent it from happening.
“I was shocked my brother had done this and felt bad for everybody. I could never have envisaged that my brother had it in him to do this to innocent people.”
Mr Abedi’s statement continued: “I am a practising Muslim. I do not hold extremist views. I do not delve too deep into anything other than pray and read Koran. I have no interest in Daesh and have no sympathy or support for their ideology and extremism. I did attend the mosque from time to time and wear traditional clothing at the time of visiting the mosque but this was not in support of ISIS but to practice my religion.
“I am not a member of ISIS nor do I subscribe to their way of thinking or ideology.”
He admitted getting a friend to purchase sulphuric acid but insisted he had done so at the behest of his brother Salman.
Hashem Abedi’s statement concluded: “I would like to add that these events happened over two years ago, my recollection is not as good as it would have been then. During the last two years I have been held in Libya by the militia and subjected to torture.
“It has been a difficult time for me for a number of reasons. I could never comprehend that my brother would have committed such a devastating attack taking not only his life but that of 22 others and injuring many more.
“I have been held in a small dark cell for 2 years and almost 2 months. I have also been tortured. I am relieved to be back in the UK and wish to assist in this investigation as much as I can. I have asked my solicitor to prepare a statement for me as I wish to explain myself in the best way possible and assist the police as much as I am able to.”
The statement brought the prosecution’s case to a close following 24 days of the trial, and the jurors then learned that the absent defendant would not be giving evidence.
The judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, turned to Stephen Kamlish QC, defending, and said: “Two matters I want to raise with you. Firstly that the jury are aware that obviously that Mr Abedi is not in the courtroom albeit he’s in the court building. I think it’s correct you are not asserting or presenting evidence he’s unfit to attend trial.”
“That’s correct,” replied the QC.
The judge continued: “Secondly, have you advised your client that the stage has now been reached at which he may give evidence and if he chooses not to do so, or having been sworn refuses to answer any questions, the jury may draw such inferences as will be proper from his failure to do so?”
The QC answered: “Yes, my lord.”
The judge told the jurors that was the end of the evidence in the case and he asked them to return to have the following day (Wednesday) off and to return on Thursday.
March 11, Day 25
The judge asked Stephen Kamlish to reconsider the decision made by his client that he should not make a closing speech to the jury. It was a ‘fairly unusual’ position and, despite his client’s instructions, the judge asked the QC to think whether it was ‘in accordance with your professional duties’. The barrister said it was the ‘only proper course’ but agreed to think again about it.
The prosecutor, Duncan Penny QC, noted there were other cases where the defence made no closing speech but he said these were short cases not one like this ‘of the greatest complexity’.
He said he would not be waiving his right to make a closing address to the jury because of the defence’s decision not to make one.
The judge said he would be telling the jurors there was no obligation on the defendant to attend court and that they should not to ‘draw any adverse inferences’ from his absence.
The prosecutor confirmed he will address the ‘bad character’ evidence the jurors have heard concerning Hashem Abedi, namely the possession of drugs, driving without a licence and insurance, failing to stop at the scene of an accident and his admission he facilitated fraud.
In his prepared statement to police, the defendant said he had given a friend’s bank details to Salman Abedi so they could do ‘a credit card fraud somehow’.
Mr Penny said he would be saying that the prepared statement was ‘riddled with lies’.
During an adjournment, Hashem Abedi had a 40-minute video-link consultation with his QC.
Mr Kamlish said that as a result his client wished to be brought to court in the morning so he can continue to speak to him about what, if anything, he says during a closing speech.
It was agreed he would see his client at 9.35am but the judge stresses he wished to start with the jury at 10.30am.
March 12, Day 26
Hashem Abedi came to the Old Bailey and sacks his entire defence team, including his QC Stephen Kamlish and his junior counsel Richard Thomas.
It was the second time during the case he has sacked his counsel.
In the absence of the jury, Mr Kamlish informed the judge the defendant has ‘withdrawn instructions’ and he does not wish to be in court and nor to represent himself in court or for anyone else to defend him.
The judge pressed the QC on whether his former client was told he had a right to be legally represented at public expenses and the barrister confirmed he had but that he had made a ‘very firm decision’.
The defendant was later visited in the cells and signed and dated a note confirming his decision.
It said: “I have withdrawn my instructions from my legal representatives. I do not wish to participate in the trial. It follows I do not wish to exercise my right to appoint new lawyers to represent me in court. I will not be participating in the proceedings any further.”
(Image: Steve Allen)
The prosecutor, Duncan Penny QC, confirmed he did wish to make a closing address even though there would be no defendant in the dock and no closing speech on Mr Abedi’s behalf.
He outlined to the judge what areas he wishes to cover in that closing speech.
Among other things he said he wants to be able to outline to the jury the questions he would have asked him had he decided to give evidence and draw together a ‘very complicated case’.
For instance, he wanted to be able to suggest to the jurors what ‘must have been’ in the Nissan Micra by the time it was parked up in Rusholme before the brothers’ flight to Libya.
He said he wants to bring together ANPR and cell site evidence to suggest the brothers’ movements to and from Somerton Court on April 6, 11 and 12 with ‘precursor chemicals’ to make TATP.
“In essence these are complicated matters based upon various aspects of circumstantial evidence,” he said, adding that it would be ‘most unfortunate’ if the defendant were to benefit from ‘his manipulation of the process’ over the previous few weeks.
The judge adjourned to think about Mr Penny’s submissions.
When he returned the judge said he had ‘given the matter some anxious thought’ and said he thought it would be ‘inappropriate’ for the Crown to make a ‘full closing speech’.
He allowed the prosecution to make a speech which included that the defendant had chosen not to give evidence and the questions that the prosecution would have asked him had he gone into the witness box.
The Crown could also raise the matter of the defendant’s ‘withdrawal’ from the trial and some ‘factual context’.
The jurors were brought back into court .
They hear Hashem Abedi shared a ‘common goal’ with his suicide bomber brother, acting as his chauffeur, quartermaster and munitions expert in the months before the attack.
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker told the jurors the defendant was unlikely to return and that he had chosen not to have a defence team - his QC and junior counsel were also no longer in court.
The jurors were told they ‘should not draw adverse inferences’ from the absences before prosecutor Duncan Penny QC gave a closing speech in which he described how the defendant had acted as Salman Abedi’s ‘chauffeur, quartermaster and munitions technician’ in the months before the attack.
Mr Penny asked the jurors to ‘consider the credibility’ of the prepared statement Hashem Abedi had given to the police following his extradition from Libya.
It was the defendant’s right not to give evidence or answer questions but the jurors were also entitled to look at the evidence in front of him and ask whether the reason he had not answered those questions was that he had no answer to them, said the QC.
He said that prepared statement was ‘demonstrably riddled with lies’ and was ‘an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the investigators and explain away’ what he knew about the evidence against him at that time and ‘point the finger of responsibility at his dead brother’ and ‘evade responsibility’ for what he described as a ‘cruel and cowardly’ attack at the Arena.
The defendant’s failure to give evidence was a ‘thundering silence’ to avoid explaining to the jurors and hundreds of others that he too ‘had been a victim of Salman Abedi’.
He said that ‘on the contrary’ the prosecution said that Hashem Abedi was a ‘willing and skilled accomplice’ who shared a ‘common goal’ with his brother and had operated as a ‘chauffeur, at times quartermaster and munitions technician with electrical know-how’.
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The defendant, in his prepared statement, said he knew nothing about his brother’s plot and would have told his mother had he known about it.
The prosecutor outlined the questions he would have asked the defendant had he given evidence in his own trial.
The QC then moved on to the phone calls to Libya made by Salman Abedi in the days leading up to the bomb.
The prosecutor told the jury: “When you put that contact into context, you may think Salman Abedi had every opportunity to seek counsel and seek advice from his confederate brother who played such an integral role in their dire project.
“This defendant had every opportunity to give his account over what took place over those few days or to deny such a suggestion and to describe to you his surprise, shock and disgust which he felt when he woke to the news that not only had his elder brother perpetrated his appalling atrocity but Salman had betrayed his own innocent kid brother by pulling the wool over young Hashem’s eyes in a most sophisticated fashion over all those days, weeks and months.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we suggest this is nonsense and the defendant was together with his brother in this endeavour from start to finish and his reluctance to speak of it is testimony to that fact.”
March 13, Day 27
The judge gave the jurors ‘legal directions’ before they consider verdicts.
Again, the defendant wasn’t in the dock and there was no defence team.
Jurors were warned to put aside any feelings of sympathy or emotion when they retired to consider verdicts.
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker cautioned the jurors against sympathy and emotion they might have about the case and decide the guilt or otherwise of the defendant ‘with dispassion and objectivity’.
He told them: “The death of anyone is obviously a sad event, so too is the suffering of serious injury; the more so when the death and injury takes place prematurely in circumstances such as these.
“It would be surprising therefore if you were not exercised to some extent with sympathy for the family and friends both of the deceased and the injured in this case.
“However, as I am sure you will appreciate emotions are likely to obscure rather than clarify one’s ability to discern the truth, which is your task in this case.
“Therefore for the purposes of the exercise which you will be performing when you deliberate upon the evidence next week, it is important for you to put any such feelings to one side for the time being and to undertake your task with dispassion and objectivity.”
In the absence of the defendant or any defence, the judge asked the jurors to consider nine points.
“Firstly, there is no evidence that the accused had downloaded or viewed any items from the internet displaying an interest in either ISIS or any extremist Islamicist opinions and in his prepared statement the accused denied holding such opinions,” he said.
“Secondly, in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for the purchases of sulphuric acid in the months leading up to the explosion, namely that it was needed for a car battery in Libya.
“Thirdly, in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for the gathering of the metal tin cans, namely that in order to raise some money he was willing to sell them for scrap.
“Fourthly in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for the discovery of any fingerprints on the metal tin can, namely that he would smoke in the garden shed at Elsmore Road in Rusholme (sic) and may well have touched the various items in the shed whilst doing so.
“Fifthly, in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for having been to Somerton Court in Blackley, namely that his brother informed him that he was going to raise some money by subletting it.
“Sixthly, in his prepared statement the accused provided an innocent explanation for having purchased items such as nails and screws, namely that they were required to renovate the garden shed at Elsmore Road in Rusholme (sic).
“Seventhly, in his prepared statement whilst the accused accept being present when the Nissan Micra motor car was purchased, he denied knowing that it was to be used for the storage of any materials.
“Eighthly, in his prepared statement the accused denied having had any involvement in the purchasing of hydrogen peroxide.
“Ninthly, the accused left the UK and travelled to Libya in April 15, 2017, and was not present in the UK at the date of the explosion on May 22, 2017. Whereas in contrast, his brother Salman Abedi travelled back to the UK in May 18, 2017, and purchased further items which were used together with other items in the construction of improvised explosive device which he alone detonated a few days later on May 22, 2017.”
The judge explained that for the sake of fairness he had not allowed the prosecution to make a full closing speech and so, as he had with the defence, he set out key prosecution points the jurors may want to consider.
The judge continued: “The prosecution accept that there is no evidence that the accused or for that matter his brother accessed extreme Islamicist material over the internet but point out that there is a significant amount of internet activity on the phones attributed to these individuals which the police have not been able to interrogate.
“In any event, the prosecution point to the evidence of some of the accused and his friends and relations as to the change in the attitude towards these issues not only by Salman Abedi but also by the accused in the period leading up to the explosion.
“The prosecution submit that the accused’s explanation in his prepared statement for the various purchases of sulphuric acid is patently untrue, in that not only are car batteries likely to be readily available in Libya, but in any event acid is deemed to be a dangerous item which cannot be transported to Libya in any quantity, let alone the large quantities which were purchased by the accused in this case which far exceeded what might be required for a car battery.
“The prosecution submit that the accused’s explanation in his prepared statement for the gathering of metal tin cans is also untrue and point out that not only is there no evidence of any scrap merchant having purchased any of these items but the position of the accused’s fingerprints on some of these items is consistent with his involvement in the use of these tins in the production of the earlier stages of the making of detonators and other items for the production of an improvised explosive device.
He continued: “The prosecution point out that a knowledge of the functioning and production of electrical circuits is required in making an improvised explosive device of the type which was made in this case and point out that it was the accused who had the requisite knowledge in this case.
“The prosecution submit that if one looks at the close connection which the accused had to the purchase of hydrogen peroxide, it is apparent that he was aware of and instrumental in the purchase of this item for which there is no other reason for him to possess it, other than as an ingredient in the manufacture of the explosive material TATP.
“The prosecution point not only to the accused’s involvement in both the renting of the alternative premises at Somerton Court in Blackley and the purchase of the Nissan Micra motor car but also the car trip from Somerton Court to Devell House on April 15, 2017, and submit that this is consistent with his involvement in the manufacture of small batches of TATP which was the safer way of producing this highly volatile explosive material and the subsequent transportation of the explosive substance and other items by taxi from Somerton Court to the Nissan Micra where it was stored pending his brother’s return from Libya to effect the final stage of the joint enterprise, namely the assembling of final device and its detonation in a suicide mission some four days later.
“The prosecution acknowledge that the accused was not present in the UK at the time of the explosion but submit that this is does not amount to evidence of any change of mind on the part of the accused and point out that there is no evidence either from the accused himself or in his earlier prepared statement to suggest that he had changed his mind and withdrawn from the criminal enterprise. On the contrary, his prepared statement denies that he had any idea that his brother was capable of killing innocent people and that had he done so he would have tried to prevent him from doing so.”
Mr Justice Baker went on: “Moreover, the prosecution suggest that by the time the accused returned to Libya his work of assisting in the manufacture of the explosive material and the earlier stages of production was done and only one person was needed to assemble and detonate the final device. Moreover, there was the inevitable risk that had the accused been in the UK at the time of the explosion then he would have been arrested in the course of the subsequent police investigation.
“In summary, these are some of the opposing points which may arise for your consideration in the course of your deliberations in this case. You are of course free to accept any or none of them. Essentially your task will be to reflect upon the evidence which you have both seen and heard in this courtroom and then to evaluate it carefully using your collective good sense and knowledge of the world. In doing so you will wish to bear in mind which if any of these points chimes with your collective wisdom and which do not do so.
“Once having considered the evidence in this manner, it will be for you to apply the law which I will provide to you and accordingly reach your verdicts in this case.”
The judge then began to sum up the case before adjourning over the weekend until Monday.
March 16, day 28
Before the jurors came into court, the judge confirmed Hashem Abedi has again refused to come to court despite being medically fit to attend.
He also told the prosecutor that a juror had called to say she was running a high temperature and had decided to ‘self-isolate’ for seven days.
The absence of the defendant ‘hampered’ any decision he made as the defence could make no submissions but he decided, instead of adjourning the trial for a week in the hope the juror would return, to discharge the poorly juror, suspected of having Covid-19, and continue with 11 jurors.
When 11 jurors were brought into court, the judge told them he was going to discharge their colleague and carry on with 11.
After completing his summing up of the case, he sent the jury out to consider their verdicts, telling them he will only accept unanimous verdicts for the time being.
They are only out for 15 minutes and the judge sends them home for the day.
March 16, Day 29
The jury deliberations started in earnest.
After about three-and-a-half hours of deliberations, the jurors returned to court and found Hashem Abedi guilty to all counts on the indictment: 22 counts of murder, one count of attempted murder concerning all those who were injured but survived and one charge of conspiracy to cause an explosion.
Some members of the families wept in the public gallery as the verdicts are delivered in court 2 at the Old Bailey.
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker adjourned sentencing, saying the court would write to the absent Abedi to inform him of the verdicts and to ask if he wanted to make submissions about his sentence, or be represented, despite having two QCs during the proceedings.