Images of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi just 19 seconds before he detonated device shown at brother’s trial

From the Manchester Evening News

CCTV images of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi just 19 seconds before he detonated his device were shown at his brother’s trial. Wearing a cap and carrying a heavy bomb in his rucksack, the images show him mingling with concert-goers as they leave 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, many of them children, who were in the foyer at the time of the blast, which propelled almost 3,000 pieces of shrapnel. 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 court heard.

The bomber’s brother, Hashem Abedi, 22, from Fallowfield, was in Libya at the time of the attack.

He is standing trial at the Old Bailey in London, where he denies assisting his sibling in the months before the attack by allegedly helping him source shrapnel for the device and chemicals to produce deadly TATP explosives.

As the trial resumed, jurors were shown CCTV images of Salman Abedi’s final movements on the day of the bombing. . . The jurors were told he twice called the Abedi family home in Libya, one of them lasting four minutes and 12 seconds.

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 leaving the venue and parents coming to collect their children – 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.

A map of where those who died 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 jury heard Salman Abedi was dismembered in the blast.

He was identified in part thanks to DNA, which matched DNA taken from him during an arrest for shoplifting in 2012, the court was told. A Halifax bank card beating 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.

Hashem Abedi, 22, from Fallowfield, denies 22 counts of murder; one charge of attempted murder concerning those who were hurt but survived; and a charge that he conspired with Salman Abedi to cause an explosion.