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More than 250 survivors of the suicide attack that killed 22 people at a concert Ariana Grande in Manchester, England, in 2017 sued the United Kingdom’s internal intelligence service, lawyers reported.
Lawyers from three firms said Sunday that they filed a class-action lawsuit with the country’s investigative powers court on behalf of more than 250 clients. They said they could not provide further details because it is an ongoing legal matter.
Suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated a backpack bomb at the Manchester Arena in northwest England at the end of Grande’s concert on May 22, 2017, as thousands of young people left the venue. More than 100 people were injured, many of them children and adolescents. Abedi died in the explosion.
An official inquiry reported last year that the UK’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, did not act quickly enough on key information and missed a significant opportunity to prevent the bombing, the deadliest extremist attack in the country in recent years.
Abedi had been a “subject of interest” to MI5 officials in 2014, but his case was soon closed because he was determined to be a low-risk person.
The report also found that an MI5 officer acknowledged that he considered intelligence on Abedi could be a national security concern, but did not communicate this to colleagues quickly enough.
Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, said in a rare televised statement that he was “deeply sorry” that his agency had been unable to prevent the attack.
