Manchester Arena Inquiry adjourns for secret hearings

The Manchester Arena bombing inquiry has been adjourned for three weeks of secret hearings.

Closed hearings, where only the inquiry chairman, legal team and Home Office lawyers will be present, will start next week at an undisclosed location.

Bereaved families, their lawyers and the press and public will be excluded on national security grounds.

Families of the 22 people murdered have been told as much information as possible will be released to them.

The hearings will cover whether the security services and counter terrorism police could have prevented Salman Abedi from detonating a bomb in 2017.

Four MI5 witnesses will give evidence during the closed sessions.

Lawyers for the bereaved families called for "maximum disclosure" when possible at the hearings.

The request was to ensure national security is not used as a blanket measure to restrict public knowledge of mistakes, the inquiry heard.

The Manchester Arena Inquiry has been looking at what was known about Abedi before the May 2017 bombing, which killed 22 people and injured hundreds more.

One matter the closed hearings will cover will concern the failure of MI5 on two occasions to pass on "highly relevant" intelligence to counter terrorism police in Manchester in the months before the bombing.

The hearings will also hear evidence from 10 witnesses who are all officers in the North West Counter Terrorism Police.

Inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders ruled that if some of the secret service evidence was held in public it could compromise national security.

Paul Greaney QC, counsel to the inquiry, said: "Understandably, there is concern about the closed hearings.

"The inquiry legal team does recognise that when the bright light of public scrutiny is not brought to bear on some parts of the evidence, there may be a perfectly natural adverse reaction from those to who this process means so much.

"As has been said, throughout the closed hearing, the inquiry legal team will be constantly vigilant for evidence which can be broken out from closed into open."

The closed hearings begin on 1 November and the public hearing will resume on 22 November.

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