How Manchester bomber lived streets away from notorious ‘terror twins’, a top ISIS recruiter and more than a dozen other known jihadis
KILLER Salman Abedi grew up just streets away from more than a dozen other young jihadis, including many who have died fighting for ISIS or been jailed for trying to join them.
The Manchester bomber lived just a stone's throw from the school attended by the notorious "terror twins'" and down the road from a top ISIS recruiter who he is believed to been close friends with.
The revelation comes as it emerges more than a dozen jihadis who have either been killed or jailed since 2013 come from the area of South Manchester where Abedi lived.
Abedi's home in Fallowfield is just a few minutes' walk from Whalley Range High School, where 16-year-old jihadi brides Salma and Zahra Halane were star pupils before they fled to Syria in 2014.
He also lived just half a mile down the road from the home of Raphael Hostey, a baby-faced ISIS recruiter known as Abu Qaqa al-Britani who boasted of persuading hundreds of Brits to join the terror group.
Hostey was 24 when he died fighting for ISIS after leaving his wife and child to join their ranks in October 2013.
All four came from the same small pocket of South Manchester, growing up in the neighbouring suburbs of Moss Side, Fallowfield, Chorlton and Didsbury.
Of the known terrorists to hail from the area, some were part of the "Britanni Brigade", a battalion of young British jihadis who fled the area to join militants in Syria and Iraq.
Abedi's family home in Elsmore Road, Fallowfield, is less than two miles from the childhood Moss Side home of Jamal Al-Harith, the 50-year-old suicide bomber who was received£1million compensation after being freed from Guantanamo Bay.
He is to have known both the Halane twins and Hostey, having been a close friend of Hostey’s dad, Ibraheem, 42.
Their brother Ahmed, 24, believed to have been the leader of the so-called Britanni Brigade, attended Burnage Academy for Boys - the same school as Abedi.
The Halane family home is less than a mile away from Abedi's in Chorlton.
In December 2013, Salma was caught viewing ISIS propaganda at school, which included images of a suicide vest, a boy with a machine gun and recruitment video of Hostey.
And just over a mile away to the north is the Moss Side home of Abdalraouf Abdallah, who was jailed last July after trying to help RAF veteran Stephen Gray - aka Mustafa Deen - to join militants in Syria.
Abdalraouf was paralysed from the waist down after being injured in the 2011 Libyan uprising.
His brother Mohammed Abdallah was arrested at Heathrow in September last year on suspicion of joining ISIS after flying back to the UK from Libya.
Killer Abedi, 22, is thought to have returned to the UK from Libya as recently as this week.
Gray - who converted to Islam after leaving the RAF - also lived in Moss Side until he was jailed for five years.
While Gray was refused entry to Syria via Turkey, his friend Ray Matimba, another young man from Moss Side, made it across the border to join jihadis.
When Hostey fled to Syria on October 6 2013, he was joined by two other friends from the area, Mohammed Javeed and Khalil Raoufi.
Raoufi, 20, also known as Abu Layth, was killed in combat in 2014.
Javeed - nicknamed "Prinny" - blew himself up in a suicide attack.
In 2016, Abdullahi Ahmed Jama Farah - the cousin of the Halane twins - was jailed for helping pal Nur Hassan, 19, travel to Syria to fight.
A court heard Farah created a "hub of communication" from his mum's home, from which he chatted to his friends Hostey, Raoufi and Javeed.
Javeed’s brother, Jamshed, had also planned to join ISIS but was arrested in Britain before he could travel to Syria.
The Bolton biology teacher was jailed for six years in 2015.
He was arrested in December 2013 hours before he was set to leave the UK.
Some of the Britanni Brigade are said to have attended the Jameah Masjid-e-Noor mosque, Stretford.
In February, mosque elders confirmed the boys sometimes used the building for meetings but had not been radicalised there.
A spokesman told the Guardian: "We’ve never had any radical speakers here but you cannot stop people from meeting each other."
A court heard Gray also attended the mosque using the name Mustafa after converting to Islam.
Abedi and his family attended Didsbury Mosque, which released a statement today condemning the attack.
Imam Mohammed Saeed said Salman stopped going to the mosque in 2015 as he objected to anti- ISIS comments.
He said: "Salman used to come to the mosque occasionally, he wasn't particularly friendly towards me because he didn't like my anti-ISIS sermons."
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