Detectives are preparing to interview the brother of Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi following reports the pair acted together to buy bomb-making equipment. Det Ch Supt Russ Jackson said Abedi and his younger brother, Hashem, travelled to Libya together on 15 April before the older sibling returned to carry out the attack on 22 May.Jackson said the police wanted to interview Hashem Abedi after the militia group holding him in Libya said he had confessed to buying bomb-making parts in Britain and knowing that Abedi was planning an attack.

The development came as police released the final two of 20 suspects detained in connection with the Ariana Grande concert bombing that killed 22 people and wounded 200 others. Detectives believe Abedi assembled the deadly nailbomb himself but have not yet established whether he acted alone in obtaining bomb-making materials before he left the country on 15 April. Jackson said detectives were “relentlessly pursuing” several critical lines of inquiry, including whether others knew that he was storing materials in a white Nissan Micra purchased by Abedi two days before he left for Libya. The car was later found in Rusholme, less than two miles from Abedi’s house in Whalley Range, south Manchester.(guardian)…[+]