Manchester bomber Salman Abadi grew up within three-mile radius of 16 other jihadists — including ‘terror twins’ and Mosul suicide bomber
THE hum of lawnmowers and the smell of freshly cut grass filled the air yesterday in the neat streets of Fallowfield.
Summer had arrived in the Manchester suburb, which until this week sat largely unknown to the rest of Britain.
But the pictures of armed SAS troops storming into one of its homes changed all that.
The raid on bomber Salman Abedi’s home made sure the south Manchester enclave is now inextricably connected with terrorism and the city’s links with violent radical Islam are back on the national agenda.
At least 16 jihadists hail from a three-mile radius around the district where Abedi grew up — in Chorlton, Fallowfield, Didsbury and Moss Side.
Manchester’s history of radical Islam dates back to 2000.
That year, following an FBI tip-off, an al-Qaeda manual was found on the computer of Libyan-born terrorist Abu Anas in a Didsbury flat.
The “Manchester Document” showed in Arabic how to wage “holy war on the streets of Britain”, including making explosives and becoming a suicide bomber.
MOST READ IN UK NEWS
Anas, 35, who entered the UK illegally before claiming political asylum in 1995, fled Britain before police raided his flat, only to be captured later by US forces in Afghanistan.
In 2014, Mohammad “Prinny” Azzam Javeed, from Levenshulme, and his friend Anil Khalil Raoufi, from Didsbury, were killed after fighting for Isis.
Javeed had been due to start a chemical engineering degree but made his way to Syria instead.
The same year, his brother Jamshed Javeed, who lived close to the Abedi family and taught chemistry at a Bolton school, was jailed for trying to join Isis.
His family, concerned about his radicalisation, had reported him.
Other south Manchester jihadists have links with “terror twins” Salma and Zahra Halane, who were star pupils at Whalley Range High School before they slipped out of the UK in 2014, aged 17, to become jihadi brides with Isis in Syria.
The girls, who had been aspiring medical students, became notorious recruiters for Isis.
While the twins glorified IS in Syria and Iraq, their brother Ahmed, 24, was fighting with Al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia.
He is currently living in Denmark, where he was born, and is enrolled in a deradicalisation programme.
A cousin of the twins, Abdullahi Ahmed Jama Farah, 20, was jailed after he created from his mother’s home an “Isis hub of communication” for extremists.
He helped fellow Mancunian Nur Hassan, 19, from Whalley Range, achieve his goal of travelling to Syria to fight with Isis.
Security services are investigating whether Abedi had links to Libyan terrorist Abdalraouf Abdallah and his brother Mohammed.
Abdalraouf, 23, was jailed last July for trying to help other Manchester jihadists join IS, including RAF veteran and Muslim convert Stephen Gray, from Moss Side.
Abdalraouf also raised cash and tried to arrange weapons for his brother Mohammed and fellow Mancunian Raymond Matimba, who is thought to still be in Syria, where another Mancunian jihadist, Raphael Hostey, was killed in a drone strike last year.
One wonders, where did Abedi get hold of explosives, how did he connect with the people who helped him enact this?
Under the name Abu Qaqa al-Britani, Hostey, from Moss Side, recruited young Muslims to fight for Isis.
This year Muslim convert Ronald Fiddler, known as Jamal al Harith, who was raised in Moss Side, blew himself up in a suicide attack in Mosul.
In the wake of Monday night’s attack, it was reported a group of Libyan Gaddafi dissidents, who were members of the outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, had lived near to Abedi in Whalley Range.
Among them was Abd al-Baset Azzouz, 48, a bomb maker and father-of-four from Manchester.
He left for eastern Libya, where he was accused of running an al-Qaeda network overseen by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader.
So what makes Manchester such a hotbed of extremism?
Certainly the city has changed over the years.
Moss Side has gone from a mainly Caribbean-influenced area into one where the people are most likely to be Arabic in name or appearance.
Some now call it Mosque Side.
Local imam Mohamed Abdul Malek, 61, a trustee of the Muslim Youth Foundation in Manchester, fears radical ideology appears to have taken root among some young city Muslims.
He said: “We are worried that young people could do such a thing.
"One wonders, where did this young man [Abedi] get hold of explosives, how did he connect with the people who helped him enact this?”
The imam fears a backlash against the Muslim community but added: “Muslims are equally victims of this act. Muslim youngsters were in the concert.
“We are part of this community and what hurts the community hurts us.”