MI5 sued by Manchester Arena bomb survivors

MI5 sued by Manchester Arena bomb survivors
File Photo The attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, targeted concertgoers at the end of a show by US teen pop idol Ariana Grande.(AFP)
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Updated 14 April 2024
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MI5 sued by Manchester Arena bomb survivors

MI5 sued by Manchester Arena bomb survivors
  • Relatives of victims say failure to stop Salman Abedi before attack violated Human Rights Act
  • 22 people were murdered and hundreds injured at Ariana Grande concert in 2017

London: UK intelligence agency MI5 is being sued by hundreds of survivors of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.

Twenty-two people were killed at an Ariana Grande concert in May that year when Salman Abedi, 22, detonated a homemade device loaded with nuts and bolts in the venue’s foyer, leaving hundreds more injured.

An inquiry into the attack subsequently found “there was a realistic possibility that actionable intelligence could have been obtained which might have led to actions preventing the attack.”

Sir John Saunders, the presiding judge in the inquiry, added that an MI5 officer had missed a “significant” opportunity to act and that there was a lack of communication between the intelligence agency and counterterrorism police.

A group of 250 survivors and relatives of those who died say MI5 could have prevented the attack, and that negligence in failing to do so breaches the “right to life” enshrined in the UK’s Human Rights Act.

MI5 will be required to present all evidence about how preventable the situation was at a hearing likely to happen in early 2025.

The inquiry found that MI5 had received information on Abedi in the months before the attack, but an official, identified as Witness J, said it had been treated as a criminal matter, and not related to terrorism. On questioning, Saunders found that other MI5 officials had held concerns at the time that this was a mistake, and that in any event, MI5 had kept the information it received about Abedi secret.

Saunders said that had it been treated differently and action taken, Abedi might conceivably have been detained on May 18, 2017 when he arrived at Manchester Airport from Libya with, it is believed, items related to bomb-making.

In 2023 MI5 Director General Ken McCallum issued an apology on behalf of the agency, saying that it was “profoundly sorry” for what had happened.

A spokesperson for three law firms representing the complainants — Hudgell Solicitors, Slater and Gordon and Broudie Jackson Canter — said: “Legal teams representing injured survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 can confirm that they have collectively submitted a group claim on behalf of more than 250 clients to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. As it is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable or provide any further details, or comment further, at this stage.”

A legal source told The Times: “This legal action is not about money or compensation, it’s about holding MI5 to account for failing to prevent 22 people dying and many hundreds more being seriously injured.”

Legal action against intelligence services in the UK, which goes through the Investigatory Powers Tribunal rather than the UK court system, is rare but not unprecedented.

In 2016 Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to issue an apology for the role played by MI6 in the rendition, detention and torture of Abdul Hakim BelHajj by the US in 2004. BelHajj’s wife, who was detained alongside him and was pregnant at the time, received £500,000 ($622,850) in compensation.

Joseph Kotrie-Monson, whose law firm represented a former British intelligence officer suing the UK government over post-traumatic stress resulting from his work, told The Times: “There is always the challenge of proving causation in any case where a public body has been accused of a failure in its duties, particularly when it comes to the security services.

“Disclosure of evidence is also often a terminal problem for any legal action, and typically the domestic courts will err on the side of caution when it comes to government bodies protecting confidential information.

“However, this particular forum, and the human rights claim, may be well suited to dealing with the challenges of a complaint against a clandestine organization like MI5.”


British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead

British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead
Updated 16 sec ago
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British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead

British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead
  • Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will set more detailed targets in the coming week to achieve the government’s five main goals on areas including growth, health care, crime and green energy, as his party approaches five months in power.
Labour won a sweeping majority in Britain’s lower house of parliament in July, taking power for the first time in 14 years, but has fallen just behind the opposition Conservative Party in some recent opinion polls.
Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health.
“Mission-led government does not mean picking milestones because they are easy or will happen anyway. It means relentlessly driving real improvements in the lives of working people,” Starmer said in a statement released by his office.
Government ministers and officials would be told to focus on these goals rather than individual ministries’ traditional priorities, Starmer’s office added.
Labour has not had an easy start in office. Ministers say the previous government concealed the extent of problems in areas such as prisons and the immigration system, contributing to what finance minister Rachel Reeves said was a 22 billion pound ($28 billion) black hole in public finances.
Conservatives dispute this and say much of the cost overrun reflected Labour decisions to increase pay for public-sector workers and standard in-year spending variations.
Reeves announced 40 billion pounds of tax rises in her first budget last month — up from around 8 billion pounds in Labour’s pre-election plan — on top of higher borrowing to halt a fall in public investment planned by the previous government.
Businesses have complained that they will bear the brunt of the tax rises and will probably cut investment or jobs and need to raise prices as a result.


Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France

Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France
Updated 8 min 20 sec ago
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Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France

Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France.
Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, calling Charles Kushner “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker.”
Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate firm. Jared Kushner is a former White House senior adviser to Trump who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.
The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.
Prosecutors alleged that after Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities in an investigation, he hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.
Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 counts including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was sentenced in 2005 to two years in prison — the most he could receive under a plea deal, but less than what Chris Christie, the US attorney for New Jersey at the time and later governor and Republican presidential candidate, had sought.
Christie has blamed Jared Kushner for his firing from Trump’s transition team in 2016, and has called Charles Kushner’s offenses “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was US attorney.”
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009.


France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia

France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia
Updated 30 November 2024
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France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia

France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia
  • The artifacts currently stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday

ADDIS ABABA: France on Saturday began the return of some 3,500 archeolo-gical artifacts to Ethiopia, which Paris held since the 1980s for study.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot handed over two prehistoric stone axes, bifaces, and a stone cutter to Ethiopia’s Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa during a visit to the National Museum in Addis Ababa.
The tools are “samples of nearly 3,500 artifacts from the excavations carried out on the Melka Kunture site,” a cluster of prehistoric sites south of the capital excavated under the direction of a late French researcher, Barrot said.
France and Ethiopia hold a longstanding bilateral agreement to cooperate in archeology and paleontology.
The artifacts stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday.
“This is a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections,” said Laurent Serrano, culture adviser at the French Embassy.
“These artifacts, which date back between 1 and 2 million years, were found during excavations carried out over several decades at a site near the Ethiopian capital,” he added.


Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece

Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece
Updated 30 November 2024
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Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece

Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece
  • UNHCR representative: ‘Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm’

ATHENS: The UN refugee agency has voiced concern at a rise in deaths of migrants trying to reach Greece by sea in small boats from Turkiye, following two fatal shipwrecks this week.

The UNHCR said in a statement Friday that 17 people have died in such accidents this month, while the total so far this year is at least 45 deaths.

Some 56,000 people have illegally entered Greece since Jan. 1, mostly by sea. That’s a five-year high, and the number has already exceeded government estimates of some 50,000 arrivals by the year’s end in October.

The UNHCR representative in Greece, Maria Clara Martin, said the migrant deaths “highlight the urgent need for long-term responses and safer and credible alternatives” for people fleeing conflict, persecution, violence, or human rights violations.

“Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm — we should not get used to it,” she said.

The UN agency said that this week’s two fatal accidents off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Samos, which is close to the Turkish coast, saw a mother lose three of her children, while another survivor lost his wife and daughter.

Greek authorities have attributed this year’s rise in migrant arrivals to conflicts in the Middle East. 

While there’s been a surge in people attempting the long and dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to the southern Greek island of Crete, most migrants pay smuggling gangs to ferry them from Turkiye to the eastern Aegean islands.

On Friday, the Greek coast guard said it arrested a 17-year-old Turkish youth on suspicion of having landed 16 migrants — including three children — on the eastern island of Chios.

Tunisia and Libya have become vital departure points for migrants, often from other African countries, who risk perilous Mediterranean Sea journeys in the hopes of reaching better lives in Europe.

Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing. Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 km from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.

In the latest incident reported on Friday, two unidentified bodies were recovered off Tunisia’s eastern coast after a migrant boat capsized, with one person still missing and 28 rescued.

The boat had set sail from Teboulba, a coastal town some 180 km south of Tunis.

In late October, the bodies of 15 people believed to be migrants were recovered by authorities in Monastir, eastern Tunisia.

And in late September, 36 would-be migrants — mainly Tunisians — were rescued off Bizerte in northern Tunisia.

Since Jan. 1, at least 103 makeshift boats have capsized, and 341 bodies have been recovered off Tunisia’s coast, according to the Interior Ministry.


Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute

Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute
Updated 30 November 2024
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Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute

Kenyan, Ugandan presidents to mediate Ethiopia-Somalia dispute
  • Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991

NAIROBI: Kenya’s President William Ruto said on Saturday he and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni would help mediate a dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia, threatening the region’s stability.

Landlocked Ethiopia, which has thousands of troops in Somalia to fight Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, has fallen out with the Mogadishu government over its plans to build a port in the breakaway region of Somaliland in exchange for possible recognition of its sovereignty.

Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991.

The spat has drawn Somalia closer to Egypt, which has quarreled with Ethiopia for years over Addis Ababa’s construction of a vast hydro dam on the Nile River, and Eritrea, another of Ethiopia’s foes.

Somaliland has struggled to gain international recognition despite governing itself and enjoying comparative peace and stability since declaring independence in 1991.

“Because the security of Somalia ... contributes significantly to the stability of our region, and the environment for investors, business people, and entrepreneurs to thrive,” he told a news conference.

Several attempts to resolve the feud in Ankara, Turkiye, failed to make a breakthrough.

Ethiopia’s government and foreign affairs spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Somalia’s foreign minister could not immediately be reached by Reuters.

The government of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubbaland state said earlier it was suspending relations and cooperation with the federal government in Mogadishu following a dispute over regional elections.

Jubbaland, which borders Kenya and Ethiopia and is one of Somalia’s five semi-autonomous states, reelected regional president Ahmed Mohammed Islam Madobe for a third term in elections on Monday.

However, the national government based in Mogadishu, led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, opposed the election, saying it was held without federal involvement.