Manchester Arena bomb plotter Hashem Abedi’s alleged hot oil attack on prison guards was motivated by terrorism, prosecutors will argue.
Abedi, 28, was yesterday charged with three counts of attempted murder after prison officers were attacked at his high security jail in April.
He was ordered to serve a record 55-year minimum term for helping his jihadist suicide bomber brother Salman murder 22 people, many of them children, at the Manchester Arena in 2017.
It has now been confirmed that prosecutors will allege that there was a ‘terrorist connection’ to Hashem Abedi’s alleged prison assault, which according to reports at the time left one victim ‘just millimetres’ from death.
Families of victims of the bombings subsequently wrote to the Justice Secretary expressing their ‘absolute disbelief’ over the alleged attack and said he should be locked up in solitary confinement for life.
While the alleged prison attack has not been formally declared a terrorist incident, counter-terror police were involved in the subsequent investigation.
Today it emerged that Abedi – who is due in court next month – will be prosecuted under the Terrorism Case Management Protocol.
This means that the judge in the case will consider if there was a terrorist connection to the offences, with the prosecution arguing that there was.
Abedi, who allegedly had access to a ‘self-cook kitchen’ at Frankland jail in County Durham, is accused of hurling hot oil on prison officers on April 12 before attacking them with improvised blades.
One male officer was then stabbed in the neck, with the blade coming close to severing an artery, reportedly leaving the victim ‘just millimetres’ from death.
Another male officer was said to have been stabbed at least five times in the back, puncturing a lung.
One of their female colleagues was also injured. The boiling oil is said to have left victims with third-degree burns.
Self-cook kitchens have been introduced across many prisons, including three separation units for terrorist offenders, where inmates are allowed daily supervised access to knives and other bladed implements to cook their own food.
Abedi was yesterday charged with three counts of attempted murder and one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
He was also charged with unauthorised possession in prison of a knife or offensive weapon.
Abedi will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court next month and remains in custody.
He was jailed for life in August 2020.
Abedi offered no defence to the charges that he had helped his brother plan the attack on the Manchester Arena in May 2017, killing children, teenagers and adults as they poured out of an Ariana Grande concert or waited for their loved ones, and critically injuring dozens more.
He was charged with the murders even though he was in Libya at the time of the suicide attack by his older brother, Salman who died in the attack.
Frankland Prison has housed other notorious terrorists, including Michael Adebolajo, who killed Fusilier Lee Rigby in London in 2013.
After the alleged attack on guards a Prison Service spokesperson said: ‘Three prison officers have been treated in hospital after an attack by a prisoner at HMP Frankland.
‘Police are now investigating so it would be inappropriate to comment further.
‘Violence in prison will not be tolerated, and we will always push for the strongest punishment for attacks on our hard-working staff.’
The Ministry of Justice announced a review following the alleged attack.