Manchester bomb plotter refuses to take part in deradicalisation scheme

Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi is refusing to co-operate with a prison deradicalisation programme while serving 55 years for helping his brother kill 22 concertgoers.  

Abedi is one of five inmates in a separation centre at maximum security HMP Frankland in County Durham and he along with three others have turned down the opportunity to change their ways.

Abedi, 23, is separated from the other prisoners amid concerns he could radicalise fellow inmates. 

Richard Vipond, probation officer and prison offender manager at HMP Frankland, said: 'One particular person I was working with, we opened his cell door and he said "I'm not going talk to you, you're an enemy of Islam, you're an Islamophobe, you're my enemy".

'There are some people that are so entrenched in their views, in their ideologies and their beliefs that we just become a holding centre for them.'

The brother of suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, had denied 22 counts of murder, attempted murder and plotting to cause an explosion likely to endanger life but was convicted by a jury of all the offences.

Last August he was handed 24 life sentences with a minimum term of 55 years before he can be considered for parole.

Abedi did not give evidence at his trial at the Old Bailey, absented himself from much of the proceedings and sacked his legal team.

The Abedi brothers, from Fallowfield in south Manchester, spent months ordering, stockpiling and transporting the deadly materials for the terror attack, using multiple mobile phones, addresses and runaround vehicles to make their bomb.

They joined their parents in Libya the month before the blast, but Salman returned to the UK on May 18.

He bought the final components needed for the bomb, rented a flat in the city centre in which to build it and carried out reconnaissance on the Arena before finally executing the plot as fans departed from an Ariana Grande concert.