Lockerbie bomber’s son says British intervention in Libya caused Manchester attack
Britain has itself to blame for the Manchester attack because it colluded with jihadists and left a power vacuum in Libya, according to the son of the Lockerbie bomber.
Khaled al-Megrahi, the son of the man convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in 1988, said the 2011 war against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi left the North African state fertile ground for terrorism.
In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted over the attack, which killed all 259 people aboard the aircraft and 11 more on the ground. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and sent back to Libya. He died from cancer in 2012.
The younger al-Megrahi said the suicide bombing by 22-year-old British-Libyan Salman Abedi at Manchester Arena last week was a direct result of the UK decision to join with NATO to intervene against the Gaddafi regime.
“It was Manchester, but tomorrow it will be some other place,” he told the Telegraph from his home in Tripoli.
“The militants will kill each other here and then come to each city in the West.
“A lot of Libyans are hungry, have no money and no justice. If the West continues its stance you will see a lot of the militants coming to the UK.”
Al-Megrahi urged the West to take on the extremist militants it has succored in Libya.
“The West knows what’s happening in Libya but they only want to watch and see. You make Libya like this. You will see a lot of terrorists in the UK and everywhere.
“It was easy for them to do it in 2011 and it would be easy to do it again. This time they should arm the army and not arm the militias,” he said.
Abedi, who killed 22 people attending an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, had links to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) through his father Ramadan. LIFG was the Libyan subsidiary of Al-Qaeda.
