The Law vs. the Truth: What Happened in Manchester?

Part 13 - The Inquiry

Part 13 - The Inquiry

Introduction

Part 12 of this series considered the various flaws, anomalies, discrepancies, and awkward questions left hanging by Operation Manteline, the police investigation into the Manchester Arena incident. In short, the investigation seems to have been designed to do what its name suggests, i.e. provide a mantle (an authoritative cloak) to cover up what really happened in the City Room on May 22, 2017.

The investigation’s findings provided the evidential foundation for the Manchester Arena Inquiry, which enshrined the official version of events, and is the subject of this article.

Despite containing a vast amount of factually accurate, evidence-based information that helps us to put together a detailed picture of what happened on the night, the 1,346-page Inquiry report, presenting the findings of a three-year-long process, is deficient in numerous key respects.

Some of the flaws in the Inquiry were highlighted in Part 6, including:

• failure to acknowledge the existence of Hall’s book, which at the time was the only book-length forensic examination of the evidence, and was submitted to the Inquiry five months before the hearings began;

• omission of vitally important primary empirical evidence, such as the Bickerstaff video, the Barr footage, and the Parker photograph;

• brushing aside of important evidence, such as that relating to the grey Audi parked illegally a short distance from the Arena;

• the use of restriction orders and other legal devices to keep certain evidence hidden from the public for reasons of “national security”; and

• the fact that it is extremely difficult for the public today to locate and access the evidence documents submitted to the Inquiry (the key is to use this page and the search bar at the top right; even then, certain evidence is missing).

Following Operation Manteline, the Inquiry was also guilty of:

• unnecessary censoring of nearly all CCTV footage, plus inexplicable redactions, or levels of redaction, on certain CCTV imagery;

• attempts to mislead the public with respect to CCTV footage, police radio communications, and the type of device detonated;

• a blackout on all primary empirical evidence relating to injuries, allowing the ostensible avoidance of distress to trump the public’s ability to verify that evidence independently; and

• failure to clarify whether the member of the public who was filming at 22:31:34 (see Part 14) continued to film beyond the last-mentioned time of 22:31:52, possibly up until GMP’s arrival at 22:47. This could be the most important evidence of all.

In what follows, the nature of the Inquiry, and its weaknesses, are explored in greater detail.

First, however, it is worth reiterating that public inquiries are primarily political, rather than legal, exercises. This remains true, even though the Manchester Arena Inquiry was chaired by a former High Court judge, Sir John Saunders, who was assisted by four members of the Queen’s Counsel, with other high-powered barristers asking questions on behalf of bereaved families.

As Hall put it at the summary judgment hearing,

Public inquiries are initiated and funded by the Government and are tasked with providing recommendations to the Government so the Government can then set policies. Therefore, the purpose of a public inquiry is a political exercise. They do not have the same legal standing as a trial. In a public inquiry, one counsel asks all the questions. There is no mandate in a public inquiry to test or challenge each piece of evidence. Therefore, any findings of a public inquiry have not satisfied the burden of proof which would be expected in a trial.

Thus, we should not be fooled by the sheer scale of the Manchester Arena Inquiry, or the formidable legal expertise that was on display, into thinking that a rigorous vetting of the evidence took place. Nor should we uncritically accept Saunders’ claim that the Inquiry subjected the “lead up to and the events on 22nd May to intense scrutiny” (p. 1).

On the contrary, as we will see, the findings of Operation Manteline were accepted uncritically throughout, and the Inquiry’s fundamental purpose was narrative control.

Why Hold a Public Inquiry in the First Place?

A Brief Timeline

Originally, there was going to be the police investigation into the Manchester Arena incident (Operation Manteline), plus inquests into the deaths of 22 innocent people, as well as Salman Abedi, to be led by Manchester’s Senior Coroner, Nigel Meadows.

The inquests for the 22 opened on June 9, 2017, but were adjourned until November 24, 2017, pending completion of the police investigation. However, when that date came round, it transpired that the Greater Manchester Police was seeking to extradite Hashem Abedi from Libya, with the arrest warrant having been issued in October. By law, inquest proceedings must be suspended pending a criminal trial. The inquests were, therefore, adjourned a second time, to June 15, 2018.

When that date came round, however, Abedi still had not been extradited, and Meadows had been accused of sexual harassment, which led to him being suspended two years later.

In Meadows’ absence, acting Coroner Fiona Borrill adjourned proceedings again until October 2018. According to the BBC in June 2018, Borrill stated that Meadows had decided that a retired judge should deal with the inquests; that the law would need to be changed to allow the judge to see “sensitive material”; that a retired judge would be nominated by the autumn; and that the inquests may be folded into a public inquiry. Quite how Borrill knew all this is a mystery, but it meant that the public was primed for what was to come.

The retired High Court judge, Sir John Saunders, was appointed as coroner for the Manchester inquests by Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, following consultation with the Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, in August 2018.

Hashem Abedi was not extradited until July 17, 2019, two years and two months after the Manchester Arena incident (§23.140). As discussed in Parts 2 and 12, the fact that the device detonated in the City Room was demonstrably not a TATP bomb means that the entire narrative around Salman and Hashem Abedi sourcing the components for, and building, a TATP shrapnel bomb is a red herring, much like the “Muslim hijackers” narrative with respect to “9/11.”

Therefore, it is reasonable to ask whether the inordinate delay in extraditing Hashem Abedi — who, without the TATP narrative, has no provable ties to the Manchester Arena incident — was intended as a means of delaying an official conclusion regarding the circumstances of the reported deaths until such a time as public interest in the case had waned. Meanwhile, the delay served to keep the connection between the Manchester Arena incident and Libyan Islamist terrorism in the public mind as Western military action in Libya intensified (see Part 10).

The Hashem Abedi trial concluded on March 17, 2020. Just six days later, the UK went into “lockdown.” Abedi’s trial, plus “Covid-19,” created what Saunders referred to as “two unavoidable, but nonetheless significant postponements to the Inquiry’s start date” [39], which at first was going to be in June 2020, but ended up being September 7, 2020, over three and a quarter years after the incident. The final hearing did not take place until June 2023, over six years after the incident. The Inquiry was not formally closed until August 1, 2023.

Clearly, the journey from May 22, 2017, to the end of Inquiry proceedings was a mammoth ordeal for all concerned. However, why was there a public inquiry in the first place? What was the point of that ordeal?

Violation of Article 2 Rights

The President of the Queen’s Bench Division, Dame Victoria Sharp, summarised the situation as follows:

Following a pre-inquest review hearing held on 29 July 2019, the Chairman [Sir John Saunders] ruled that article 2 [the right to life] of the [European Human Rights] Convention was engaged for the purposes of the inquests. The Chairman held that substantive obligations under article 2 may have been violated. He said that agents of the British State, and/or systemic defects in the security system of the United Kingdom, might be, in some way, implicated. On 27 September 2019, Sir John formally invited the Secretary of State for the Home Department to establish a public inquiry pursuant to section 1 of the 2005 [Inquiries] Act. [8]

In other words, failures by the security services were to blame for the Manchester Arena incident not being prevented, and this constituted a violation of the victims’ Article 2 rights, something which procedurally requires a full investigation.

The strange thing about this logic is that Sharp herself rejects it. According to the President of the Queen’s Bench Division,

there are categories of case which give rise to an automatic obligation on the state to conduct an effective investigation. These include cases where death is caused by the use of force by a state agent or whilst the deceased is in the custody of the state. [58]

The Manchester Arena incident does not constitute such a case:

It was not an attack by the State itself, nor was it an attack by an agent of the State, nor was it an attack on persons in the care or custody of the State. [67]

Rather, it was “an attack carried out in the community by a non-State actor” [67]. As such, “the State did not owe particular protective duties” to the victims. And so, “It follows that there is here no automatic obligation on the State to establish an inquiry […]” [62].

In any case, Sharp adds, “there has been a full criminal investigation [the Hashem Abedi trial] together with other investigations” [75], namely:

• a 66-page report by Lord Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Counter Terrorism Legislation, assessing MI5 and police internal reviews regarding four terrorist attacks in London and Manchester (published in December 2017);

• the 224-page Kerslake Report into the emergency response to the Manchester Arena incident (published March 27, 2018); and

• a 119-page report by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, titled The 2017 Attacks: What Needs to Change? in relation to terrorist attacks at Westminster, the Manchester Arena, London Bridge, Finsbury Park, and Parsons Green (published on November 22, 2018).

Therefore, if there was no automatic obligation on the State to establish an inquiry under Article 2, and given that a full criminal investigation plus three separate high-level investigations had already taken place by the time the Inquiry began, what need was there for the Saunders Inquiry?

Closed Hearings

The Inquiry was formally established by the Home Secretary on October 22, 2019 [9]. Saunders explains why:

Those inquests were only suspended and an Inquiry established because I determined that in order to properly investigate the deaths, and examine the matters within the scope of the inquests, I needed to hold closed hearings to consider evidence about whether the attack could have been prevented. [31]

Or as Dame Sharp put it, Saunders moved to establish a public inquiry because of “sensitive material” which “could not be considered in the course of an inquest within the Coronial framework” [8]. What sensitive material, exactly?

Saunders recounts that

The Home Secretary on behalf of HM Government […] made a PII [Public Interest Immunity] application to me relating to material in the possession of the Security Service [MI5] and Counter Terrorism Police relating to information that they had about Salman Abedi before the bomb attack. I upheld that application in both open and closed judgments. As a consequence of that ruling the Inquests [were] converted into a Public Inquiry […]. (p. 175)

Once again, all roads lead back to MI5 and Counter Terrorism Policing. The inquests were ostensibly converted into a public inquiry so that classified information could be heard in closed session.

The narrative spun at the time was that “shortcomings” in the police and security services, if exposed, would represent a “national humiliation.” Saunders, for his part, postured that

he would not take anyone’s humiliation into account and the families will have to “take his word” that he will investigate the authorities thoroughly.

Given that public inquiries are political exercises, however, there is no good reason to take anyone at their word. The public needs to see the evidence for itself, otherwise the inquiry is not really public. “Public Inquiry” is a misnomer when certain evidence is heard in closed session, or is otherwise withheld or redacted for no good reason.

Saunders wrote on October 25, 2021, that “national security” was what compelled the need for a public inquiry:

At the time that I was conducting inquests into the deaths of the 22 people who died at the hands of Salman Abedi (SA) I made PII rulings excluding relevant evidence from the inquests on the grounds that to include it would have a detrimental effect on national security. The consequence of that has been that the Home Secretary agreed to establish a statutory Public Inquiry which enables me to consider that relevant evidence in a CLOSED hearing. (p. 194)

Already in 2019, however, Nicola Brook of Broudie Jackson Canter (one of the law firms representing the families of the deceased) understood what the “closed hearing” would mean:

MI5 and CTP [Counter Terrorism Police] are likely to get their wish that the [inquest] process will become a Public Inquiry at which much evidence will be heard behind closed doors and without the presence or participation of the bereaved or their lawyers or the scrutiny of the media.

The predictable consequence was that, at the end of the three-year Inquiry, Saunders concluded:

Ultimately, for the reasons I have given, it has not been possible to provide comprehensive answers to all their [the bereaved families’] questions publicly. (§25.16)

Thus, the Inquiry failed in its stated mission to “provide answers to the bereaved families, those who survived this terrible act and the public at large” (p. 2)

Why Have an Inquiry on Such a Grand Scale?

Remember, the Inquiry was originally conceived as a replacement for the inquests, whose purpose was to establish the circumstances around 22 deaths. According to a House of Commons briefing paper from 2021, the purpose of a coroner’s investigation is to ascertain:

• who the deceased was;

• how, when and where the deceased came by his or her death;

• the particulars (if any) required to register the death. (1.4)

This does not require an enormous amount of detail or work. In the cases of the 22, all of that information was officially available very early on. It should have been relatively straightforward to issue death certificates based on the postmortem results and the official understanding that victims were unlawfully killed by an improvised explosive device detonated by a terrorist in the City Room.

Any alleged security failures could and should have been dealt with separately, so as to avoid causing unnecessary anguish to the families, who were unable to register their loved ones’ deaths until the Inquiry had concluded. The 22 deaths were only officially registered with the General Records Office in Q2 of 2023.

But instead, a multi-year juggernaut of an Inquiry was launched. For Volume 2 alone, the Inquiry heard oral evidence from 267 witnesses between January and October 2021, not to mention witness accounts that were read out, as well as submissions from Core Participants and a “very substantial body of documentary, audio and video material” (§19.1). The reported cost to the British tax payer was £31.6 million.

What was the point of all this?

In 2014, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Inquiries Act 2005 concluded that, “where public concern extends significantly beyond a death itself to wider related issues, an inquiry may be preferable to an inquest” (1.8). This, then, opens the door to the wider considerations of Arena security, emergency response, preventability, etc. that served to structure the Inquiry report.

However, when Saunders wrote to the Home Secretary inviting her to establish a public inquiry, the reason given was “sensitive material,” not wider issues of public concern.

At the start of the Inquiry report, Saunders writes that the Inquiry can “reduce the risk of such an event happening again and, if it does, mitigate the harm it causes” (p. 1). To my knowledge, this is the first instance of that rationale being offered.

Even if we take Saunders at his word here, it is questionable how well spent the £31.6 million was. For example, it appears from Trustpilot reviews that security at the Arena today could hardly be worse. In terms of improving the emergency response, Saunders fails to draw the obvious conclusion (and indeed obfuscates the fact) that the emergency services were systematically inhibited in their chains of command (see Part 9). In terms of “preventability,” the public learns almost nothing from Volume 3 and is expected to take it as read that lessons were learned through closed hearings.

In sum, there appears to be no good reason for the scale of the Inquiry, or even for its existence in the first place.

Narrative Control

My thesis is that the Inquiry was fundamentally about narrative control.

Perhaps, originally, the idea was to delay announcing the results of the inquests until public interest in the case had waned and the public had been throughly indoctrinated into drawing an automatic association between the Manchester Arena incident and Islamist terrorism, while the West stepped up its military action in Libya (see Part 10).

The problem was, however, that massive cracks started to appear in the official narrative owing to early research by UK Critical Thinker and Richard D. Hall. They presented primary evidence that was irrefutable, such as the Bickerstaff video, the Parker photograph, the Barr footage, and drone footage of the undamaged skylight. The first of these was published in a national newspaper, but the latter three (most importantly the Barr footage) were never meant to exist, and the Inquiry and the High Court have tellingly refused to acknowledge their existence.

It is emblematic that, on the same day that the BBC began priming the public for the inquests to be turned into an inquiry (i.e., June 15, 2018), Hall published a video containing his first thoughts about the Manchester Arena incident [175]. The Parker photograph was front and centre in that video.

Clearly, it would only be a matter of time until such evidence began to spread in the public domain under conditions of relative internet freedom.

The political implications of that evidence are hard to overstate. In Davis’ view, it points to “the biggest political scandal in modern British history.” For what it appears to imply is that rogue elements within the British State staged a terrorist attack in order to legitimise coercive “War on Terror” measures (mostly recently Martyn’s Law) against the British people.

If that is the case, then, from the perpetrators’ perspective, the significance of that evidence must not be allowed to register with the public. Narrative control is everything.

In that context, the Inquiry juggernaut makes sense. Everything was thrown at defending the official narrative. Who could possibly doubt the findings of a three-year-long, £31.6 million Inquiry, chaired by a former High Court judge with the assistance of multiple QCs, which diligently took evidence from hundreds of witnesses?

Even this was not enough, however. Before Volume 2 of the Inquiry report was published in November 2022, the BBC begun its campaign against the primary dissenting voice against the official Manchester Arena narrative, namely, Richard D. Hall. For anyone left in any doubt, the ensuing show trial of Hall was intended to shut down critical questioning of that narrative once and for all (see Part 8).

It is imperative that this attack on free speech and real investigative journalism fails.

Narrative Control Regarding the Fatalities

Rolling the inquests into the Inquiry precluded any independent public verification of the circumstances surrounding the 22 official fatalities. The public is expected to accept the findings Volume 2.2 of the Inquiry report without question, particularly Part 18, which deals with the “fatal consequences of the explosion.”

One obvious problem with this is that the stated purpose of the Inquiry, as per its Terms of Reference, was

To investigate how, and in what circumstances, 22 people came to lose their lives in the attack at the Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017 and to make any such recommendations as may seem appropriate.

As Davis (2024, p. 298) observes, because it was assumed from the outset that 22 people lost their lives as the result of a terrorist attack, the Inquiry, bound by its Terms of Reference, could reach no other conclusion.

It was simply assumed that Salman Abedi’s IED unlawfully killed 22 innocent people:

Paul Greaney QC: As we all know, at 22.31 hours on 22 May, whilst in the City Room, Abedi detonated his improvised explosive device, and as a result killed 22 people, about whose lives we heard at an earlier stage in these proceedings, and injured hundreds of others.

DCS Barraclough: Yes, that’s right (p. 40, my emphasis)

All primary evidence supporting a different version of events, such as the Barr footage, the Parker photograph, and the Bickerstaff video, fell out of scope and was simply excluded from the Inquiry’s proceedings.

The official cause of death for each of the 22 named fatalities had in fact been announced as early as June 9, 2017, when Detective Superintendent Jonathan Chadwick told the first inquest hearing that Salman Abedi’s device contained a “massive number” of small metal objects which flew through the air at “a high velocity” and were “designed to kill and maim indiscriminately.” We saw in Part 2, however, that the primary evidence contradicts that claim.

Although he did not appear at the Inquiry hearings, and is not mentioned in the Inquiry report, DS Chadwick was appointed as senior identification manager. At the first inquest hearing, he outlined the identification processes used for each victim, adding that the bodies were released only after the formal hearings of the Identification Commission had concluded. Senior Coroner Meadows was responsible for that commission (01:32:10).

Recall from Part 12 that doubts were raised over the witness reliability of Bomb Scene Manager, Robert Gallagher, who is the sole source of information concerning the identification of Salman Abedi in the Inquiry report (other than a brief remark by DCS Simon Barraclough). DS Chadwick’s bold assertion about the detonation of a shrapnel bomb, in the face of all primary evidence to the contrary (see Part 2), raises similar concerns.

Post-mortems, Inquests, and the Inquiry

Post-mortems for the 22 deceased were officially held between May 24 and May 28 in the Royal Oldham Hospital mortuary by a team of four Home Office forensic pathologists led by Dr Philip Lumb (00:42:00). The others were Dr Naomi Carter, Dr Charles Wilson, and Dr Michael Parsons. The dates and the location of the post-mortems, as well as the identities of Wilson and Parsons, are not given in the Inquiry report, and the links to the Home Office are downplayed.

Prior to leading the post-mortems, Lumb took advice on blast injuries from three radiologists, all military men, namely, Colonel Dr Iain Gibb, Lieutenant Colonel Dr Mark Ballard, and Commander Dr David Gay (§18.7). Thus, the post-mortems were essentially run by the Home Office, with input from the military, indicating very tight control by the state.

Similarly, Saunders instructed two military figures in relation to John Atkinson and Saffie-Rose Roussos, namely, Surgeon Commander Dr Paul Rees and Lieutenant Colonel Dr Claire Park (§18.11). The predominance of military figures strongly detracts from the impression of a civilian exercise.

Let us return to the differences between an inquest and a public inquiry. In the case of an inquest, it is possible for members of the public to obtain a copy of the post-mortem report.

Hall claimed in 2018 that he would like to see

22 post-mortems, done twice, by two independent pathologists, and all those post-mortems published, so that we can see whether 22 people died and how they died. But you’ll not see that. If you go to the Inquest, you won’t see any evidence presented. But that’s what we need to demand. (23:35)

This was an accurate prediction. The public has never seen the post-mortem reports for those said to have died at the hands of Salman Abedi.

By rolling the 22 Manchester Arena inquests into the Inquiry, Saunders was able to ensure that the post-mortem reports would not be seen by any member of the public, including bereaved families.

Instead, all the public has to go on are second-hand references to post-mortem results in the Inquiry report (cf. Davis, 2024, p. 298). It has no way of knowing how closely those references correspond to the post-mortem results, and cannot independently assess the nature and extent of the injuries. Nor can it know whether those results definitely relate to the 22 officially deceased, or even whether any post-mortems actually took place. It only has state officials’ word for it.

When Professor Anthony Bull, a blast studies specialist at Imperial College, London, dealt with “events specific to the arena and with the 22 who died” (p. 2), he explained that he and four fellow experts “went through the post−mortem medical imaging together, and the medical imaging was the CT scanning […]” (p. 57). But how did Bull et al. know that they were definitely looking at CT scans of the 22? They would have had to take Saunders’ word for it.

Saunders prefaces Part 18 of the Inquiry report (“Fatal Consequences of the Explosion”) by stating “This is the information that, as a Coroner, I would have included in the record of inquest for each person” (§18.5, my emphasis). This is a tacit admission that formal inquests for each death were not concluded.

Yet, the Inquiry sought to maintain an inquest-like feel, as, for instance, when Sophie Cartwright QC explained that the evidence summaries being read out for the 22 officially deceased would culminate in

reading the medical cause of death as given by the pathologist following post−mortem examination, expressed using the formulation of medical causes of death used at inquests, namely 1A, the condition immediately causing death. (p. 99)

There are no coroner’s reports, however, just some brief remarks on each victim in Part 18 of the Inquiry report, organised as follows:

• an assertion that the victim was unlawfully killed;

• the approximate location of the victim at the time of death;

• the victim’s body position;

• any attempts to assist the victim;

• the time of death and whether the victim was tagged;

• whether the victim was covered; and

• post-mortem observations regarding the medical cause of death and whether the injuries sustained were survivable.

An example of this can be seen below.

Example “summary of the evidence about what happened to each of those who died” (§18.2; p. 44)

None of the information shown above is independently verifiable by the public.

Core Participants

According to Saunders, drawing on the Inquiry Rules 2006, Core Participants (CPs) are entitled to certain procedural rights during a public inquiry, the most important of which are:

(i) disclosure of materials relevant to the Terms of Reference; (ii) the opportunity to make an opening and closing statement to the Chair of the inquiry (Rule 11); (iii) the right to apply to the Chair of the inquiry for permission to question witnesses during the oral hearings (Rule 10); (iv) the ability to suggest lines of questioning to be pursued by Counsel to the Inquiry (‘CTI’); (v) the opportunity to make legal and other submissions; and (vi) receipt of a copy of 2 the report published by the inquiry (Rule 17).

The Inquiry Rules 2006 stipulate the following criteria for determining Core Participant status:

In deciding whether to designate a person as a core participant, the chairman must in particular consider whether—

(a) the person played, or may have played, a direct and significant role in relation to the matters to which the inquiry relates;

(b) the person has a significant interest in an important aspect of the matters to which the inquiry relates; or

(c) the person may be subject to explicit or significant criticism during the inquiry proceedings or in the report, or in any interim report. (§5.2)

A list of Core Participants for the Manchester Arena Inquiry is publicly available. The first major category of CPs in that list is relatives of the deceased, and the second is public bodies. Three commercial organisations (Showsec, SMG Europe, and the University of Salford, which Abedi attended from October 2015 [§22.170]) were also granted CP status. So, too, were four individuals, i.e., Showsec stewards Kyle Lawler and Mohammad Agha, plus Superintendent Mark Dexter and CI Dale Sexton.

It is unclear on what basis those four individuals were awarded CP status. Dexter, for instance, does not come in for significant criticism in the Inquiry report (§13.618), whereas a great many others do (see Part 9). I am not aware of any document that explains the rationale behind the positive choice of CPs.

Controversially, none of the alleged survivors were granted CP status, even though any genuine survivor would undoubtedly meet criterion (b) above. The deadline for applications for CP status was November 20, 2019, just four weeks after the Inquiry was formally established [12]. On February 24, 2020, Irwin Mitchell Solicitors submitted a belated application for CP status on behalf of 29 alleged survivors, followed by another such application on behalf of an additional 27 individuals on March 31, 2020. Saunders denied those applications in April 2020, and an appeal against his decision was rejected in July 2020.

The reasons Saunders gave for his decision included his intent to keep the bereaved families at the heart of the Inquiry [14]; the fact that the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference could be fulfilled without the need to expand the list of CPs [14-15]; the fact that the survivors’ rights to effective participation could be met without CP designation [56]; and his legal obligation not to incur unnecessary costs [17].

The upshot was, however, that no one who was present in the City Room at the moment of detonation was granted CP status. (Mohammad Agha is seen on CCTV in the City Room one second before the official detonation time, but there is no mention of him in the Inquiry report post-detonation.)

This means that no one with first-hand experience of what took place in the City Room at the key moment had any power to influence the Inquiry through the procedural rights outlined above. Some who were present were called as witnesses, but their evidence was then carefully circumscribed by the nature of the questions they were asked.

This, again, seems like an effective form of narrative control, as it provides a further barrier to finding out what exactly was going on in the City Room.

The Inquiry’s Deference to Operation Manteline

Recall from Part 12 that Operation Manteline, led by North West Counter Terrorism Unit (which became Counter Terrorism Policing North West), fell under the aegis of MI5. It was part of an intelligence operation.

The Manchester Arena Inquiry was supposed to be “independent.” Yet, at every turn, it uncritically endorsed the findings of Operation Manteline, thereby signalling that it, too, was controlled by the same intelligence operation.

As discussed in Parts 2 and 10, based on evidence separately adduced by Iain Davis and the pseudonymous Pighooey, it is beyond reasonable doubt that certain crime scene evidence submitted to the Inquiry by Operation Manteline was fabricated. This is just one of multiple concerns regarding Operation Manteline that I identified in Part 12, following just a few weeks’ research.

How, then, are we to assess Saunders’ claim, after three years of examining the evidence, that “Operation Manteline was an impressive, effective and professional investigation” (§23.4)? Or the noble-sounding objectives of the investigation as set out by DCS Simon Barraclough and read back to him uncritically by Paul Greaney QC, namely, to

continue to search for the truth, in order to be able to bring to justice all those responsible for the atrocity, and to answer all the questions that might be posed by the victims and all the others affected? (01:13:00)

Apparently seeking to cover his own back, Saunders writes at one point in his report:

I make clear that I have not simply accepted the conclusions of Operation Manteline uncritically. I have made my own assessment. (§23.172)

However, there is no evidence anywhere in the 1,346 pages of the Inquiry report of Saunders daring to challenge the findings of Operation Manteline. Instead, he merely rubber-stamps the pre-agreed upon narrative, which was presumably set by MI5.

The Scripted Nature of the Inquiry

It appears that Operation Manteline handed the Inquiry legal team a summary of the key “facts” that had been pre-agreed with witnesses through their witness statements, and that the four QCs then worked those “facts” up into detailed evidence summaries for witnesses to confirm at the Inquiry.

We do not know the circumstances under which Manteline officers agreed the “facts” with witnesses, but we do know that Janet Senior told the Inquiry that those officers had repeatedly tried to falsify her witness statements (§4.10.2).

The Inquiry room, purpose-built at Manchester and Salford Magistrates' Court at a cost of £2.2 million to the tax payer, set the scene for a highly artificial, carefully stage-managed performance. It was the Inquiry legal team, and not the witnesses, who did most of the talking, ensuring as far as possible that the narrative being presented was “correct.”

Below are just two among countless examples.

Paul Greaney QC and DCS Simon Barraclough

Paul Greaney QC took evidence from DCS Simon Barraclough, the head of Operation Manteline. In the six-minute-long exchange below, it is obvious that Greaney was simply reading Barraclough’s witness statement back to him, and that Barraclough’s only role was to answer “yes” to confirm each and every statement:

Q. Did those officers and other individuals assist in carrying out over 16,000 actions?

A. Yes.

Q. Recovering or seizing more than 17,000 exhibits?

A. Yes.

Q. And as at the date of your statement, there will be more now, taking more than 4,000 statements?

A. Yes.

Q. Furthermore, in total, have more than 20,000 documents been produced during the course of the investigation?

A. Yes, far more.

[…]

Q. In the very early stages, was an assessment and search of the scene carried out?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. No doubt that had to be undertaken with great care so as to preserve evidence?

A. Yes, that’s correct.

Q. At that very early stage, was the body of the suspected attacker identified near to the seat of the explosion?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. And therefore close to the Arena box office?

A. Yes.

[…]

Q. […] Found close to the body of that person, who turned out to be Salman Abedi, did you recover, or at any rate, a member of your team recover, a bank card?

A. Yes, that’s right. A Halifax bank card in the name of Salman R Abedi.

Q. Furthermore, and we’ll come to the detail of this tomorrow, I expect, did facial recognition evidence support the fact that Abedi was the bomber?

A. Yes, that’s correct.

Q. And thereafter did DNA and fingerprint profiling support that fact?

A. Yes, it did.

Q. I think, even to the extent of comparing teeth, that step was taken in order to check that he was indeed the bomber?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. As your investigation progressed, did it become apparent that there was evidence indicating that Hashem Abedi, the brother of Salman Abedi, had assisted in the planning and preparation for the attack?

A. That’s correct, yes.

Q. As a result, what step was taken at that early stage in relation to him?

A. It’s actually recorded as 11.30 hours on 23 May that Hashem Abedi is declared a suspect.

Q. Very quickly afterwards, did reports start to appear in the British media about Hashem Abedi?

A. Yes, they did.

Q. Were those report to the effect that he had been detained whilst in Libya?

A. That’s correct, yes.

Q. And in due course, was that confirmed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. Did Hashem Abedi remain in custody in Libya before he returned to the United Kingdom on 17 July 2019?

A. As far as I’m aware, yes.

Q. Was his return the result of extradition proceedings between the United Kingdom and Libya?

A. That’s correct, yes.

Q. In which both your team and the Crown Prosecution Service had been engaged?

A. Yes.

Q. Was Hashem Abedi charged with the murder of 22 people?

A. Yes.

Q. The attempted murder of others who survived?

A. Yes.

Q. And with conspiring with Salman Abedi to cause, by an explosive substance, an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury or damage to property?

A. Yes.

Q. Once Hashem Abedi was back in the country, was there a desire on the part of your team to interview him?

A. Yes, there was.

Q. And did such an interview take place?

A. It did, yes, under section 22 of the Terrorism Act.

Unlike a witness under cross-examination at a trial, DCS Barraclough faced no critical or challenging questions. Instead, he himself was allowed to determine an important part of the narrative that would form the backbone of the Inquiry report.

Sophie Cartwright QC and Martin Hibbert

Another example of Operation Manteline determining the narrative was when Sophie Cartwright QC told Martin Hibbert how he came to leave the City Room:

At 23:21:57 you’re placed on a makeshift stretcher, and then you are captured on the footbridge outside the City Room at 23:22:56.

This was allegedly based on evidence from CCTV imagery, which, however, was not shown at the Inquiry. Eve Hibbert, apparently, was captured being taken out soon afterwards, at 23:25:55.

How did Cartwright know that what she was telling Hibbert was true? Did she review the CCTV imagery herself? It is difficult to tell. According to Saunders in April 2020,

The [Inquiry] team has already done a lot of work with the assistance of GMP in identifying witnesses who can assist me. For the events in the City Room in particular, this has involved consideration of witness statements but also comparing that with CCTV and contemporaneous documentation. [37].

It is unclear here who was comparing witness statements with CCTV — whether GMP, the Inquiry team, or both. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the Inquiry team had full access to the unredacted CCTV footage, or whether it was only shown the minimal footage plus 806 CCTV images that were released during the Inquiry.

For both ethical and pragmatic reasons, it seems unlikely that Cartwright, or any of the other Counsel, would have spent hours sifting through traumatic footage of dead and injured people, when that was the role of Operation Manteline investigators.

Counsel’s primary role was to establish the “facts” as such with the witness for the purposes of the Inquiry, and thus to imbue them with an official imprimatur.

Cartwright, then, was almost certainly reading from a summary script provided by Operation Manteline’s Detective Superintendent Teresa Lam and Detective Inspector Michael Russell. It was their role to review the CCTV imagery and to reconstruct the post-explosion period, including what happened to the victims (§19.61).

Saunders paid tribute to Lam and Russell (§19.60), and did not question their reconstruction of events.

The Inquiry’s Manipulation of Lorna Philp

Another example of narrative control in the Inquiry has to do with manipulation of witnesses.

For example, Lorna Philp (later Lorna Hills) was the principal case officer at the UK forensic explosive laboratory (pp. 101-102). She was manipulated at the Inquiry into endorsing the findings of Operation Manteline.

TATP

Nicholas De la Poer QC asked Philp:

[…] As an introduction to the subject matter that we are talking about, what is TATP? (p. 102)

The Inquiry took it for granted that TATP was used in Salman Abedi’s device. De la Poer cited the “Agreed Facts” in the Hashem Abedi trial, which show traces of TATP as having been found in multiple locations, including the City Room. “Agreed facts,” de la Poer explained, are “matters which are agreed as being correct and true as between the prosecution and the defence” (p. 114). Given that Hashem Abedi fired his entire defence team and refused to testify, however, it is hard to know how much to read into any such “agreement.”

We are on much firmer ground, evidentially, in our scientific understanding that TATP does not generate light, heat, or smoke, yet all these qualities were reported by multiple witnesses at the Inquiry (see Part 2). On this basis, we can say with confidence that whatever was detonated in the City Room was not a TATP device.

Through a series of questions from de la Poer, however, including some relating to an Islamic State video showing how to make a TATP bomb, Philp was brought to an explicit endorsement of the TATP narrative:

Q. There are other data points outside your expertise about, for example, when this video was first published and by whom, but just dealing within the video’s four corners, were you able to reach any conclusion about whether or not Salman and/or Hashem Abedi watched that particular video?

A. I cannot give an opinion as to whether they watched that particular video or not.

Q. Are you able to say, though, whether, had they followed that video or one which was materially identical, they would have produced a substance very like that used at the Manchester Arena?

A. Yes, that video gave instructions to manufacture TATP, which was the explosive used at the Manchester Arena.

Q. So its method is consistent, can we say, with that which was ultimately produced by Salman and Hashem?

A. Yes. (p. 112)

This was sneaky on de la Poer’s part. He framed a hypothetical question (“had they followed that video…”), and it was enough to solicit a hard claim in response (“TATP […] was the explosive used at the Manchester Arena”).

Shrapnel

De la Poer asked Philp:

Did you examine a very large number of items which were seized as part of the investigation? (p. 106)

Philp confirmed that she did. The unspoken assumption was that the items she was given to examine were found where the investigation claims they were found.

For example, Philp claimed to have examined 29.26 kilograms of metal nuts that were, in her words, “recovered from the arena,” as well as 1.47 kilograms of screws or cross dowels (p. 110-111).

We saw in Part 12 why it is improbable that Salman Abedi was carrying such a large mass in his rucksack. We also know from the Barr footage and Parker photograph that shrapnel had not been sprayed everywhere at or around 22:35 on May 22, 2017 (see Part 2).

Left: snip from Barr footage; right Parker photograph

Therefore, was Philp simply given a large amount of nuts, screws, and cross dowels to examine by the investigation and told they were recovered from the City Room? This is an important consideration, since Philp’s expert testimony formed the basis of the Inquiry report’s finding that Abedi’s device

comprised a high explosive element, triacetone triperoxide [TATP], which was surrounded by a large number of small metal items. Those metal items comprised 29.26kg of metal nuts and 1.47kg of screws or cross dowels. It is estimated that there were approximately 3,000 such items in total (§17.1)

Philp attended the City Room with two colleagues on May 23 and May 24, 2017 (p. 106). It seems unlikely that she would have failed to spot evidence of 3,000 nuts, screws and cross dowels having been sprayed everywhere.

Therefore, given that there is no primary evidence of shrapnel damage as a result of the blast (see Part 2), and given that crime scene evidence was fabricated (see Part 10), we must ask whether nuts, screws, and cross dowels were strewn across the floor in the early hours of May 23, 2017?

The Connection to Granby Row

Other items allegedly seized by Manteline investigators from the City Room included fragments of a money tin that matched the lid to a money tin found at Granby Row, where the Abedi brothers had allegedly built their bomb.

Note carefully the phrasing of de la Poer’s question to Philp about this:

Are you able to confirm, although it will have been others who seized it, that the investigation was able to establish that the lid to that money tin, or least one that fitted a tin of that type, was found at Granby Row? (p. 109)

How could Philp “confirm” the connection to Granby Row, given that “others” had found the money tin lid there? Again, the hidden assumption is that the investigation told the truth about the provenance of the items concerned.

Philp naturally made that assumption. So, when de la Poer asked her again whether the money tin lid “provides a connection between Granby Row and the scene of the detonation,” she replied “Yes” (p. 109).

Based on her trust that the police investigation had been conducted honestly, Philp ended up co-signing all the key talking points in relation to the alleged bomb: it was TATP, it was packed with 3,000 pieces of shrapnel, and it was built by the Abedi brothers at Granby Row.

In this way, the principal case officer at the UK forensic explosive laboratory could be cited as an authoritative source on the nature of the alleged bomb, even though all that seems to have happened was that her trust was manipulated and exploited.

The Inquiry’s Meticulous Avoidance of Detail Regarding Casualties and Fatalities (Excluding Chapter 12)

Ostensibly in the name of avoiding causing distress to anyone watching the live hearings, Saunders and, in particular, his Counsel, went to great lengths to make sure that any concrete discussion of injuries and fatalities was rigorously avoided outside of Chapter 12 (the part of the Inquiry that dealt specifically with fatalities).

This is prima facie extraordinary, give that the Inquiry was established precisely to investigate the deaths of 22 people.

When the “survivors” appealed against Saunders’ decision to deny them Core Participant status, they were told by the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, Dame Victoria Sharp, that their “fundamental error” was to “treat a public inquiry established to investigate the deaths of the 22 as a public inquiry into all the circumstances of the Manchester bombing” [50].

Yet, the Inquiry itself went on to investigate a raft of such circumstances, from Arena security to the emergency response and preventability, while only devoting a single Part (43 pages) of its 25-Part (1,346-page) final report to what happened to those who died.

Why, then, was the Inquiry reluctant to address the one thing that the inquests had originally set out to establish, i.e. the precise circumstances of death?

The Inquiry’s Rigorous Avoidance of “Distressing Content”

Every legal figure who spoke at the Inquiry took pains to stress to witnesses that there would be no discussion of specific details relating to what they saw in the City Room.

Again and again, a QC would warn of potentially distressing content approaching and would offer anyone present or watching online the opportunity to leave the room or switch off.

For example, when about to show imagery of bomb components that were seized from in the City Room and were freely shown across the legacy media on May 24, 2017, Nicholas de la Poer QC remarked

I’m going to give a moment, sir, if I may, to people who may wish to leave or to turn away from their feed. The animation itself runs to about 5 minutes, so if people are stepping away, I would encourage them to do so for that duration and I make clear that it does contain some photographs of items seized from the scene in the form that they were in, but it is not graphic in its content. But that said, it is possible that it could be extremely distressing. (p. 83)

Sophie Cartwright QC told ETUK’s Ian Parry:

Can I make clear at the outset that when we deal with the events of the night, I’m not going to be asking you about any particular individual that you dealt with, let alone am I going to be asking you to name any individual that you dealt with. I’m not going to be showing on the screen any image of the City Room or elsewhere. But nonetheless you are going to be dealing with some of your actions during the course of that night. And you know, as I’m sure others do, that that is capable of being distressing. (01:49:10)

Paul Greaney QC stated

During the evidence itself, we, the inquiry legal team, do not anticipate showing any CCTV footage or still image of the City Room after the detonation of the bomb, and we certainly will not be showing any CCTV footage or still image of the body of any person who was killed (p. 12).

Thus, in the name of “decency,” “morality,” “dignity,” etc., the Inquiry, with the exception of Chapter 12, systematically avoided examining directly what happened to victims.

Censorship of Body-worn Camera Footage

Body-worn camera footage, particularly that of TravelSafe officer Philip Clegg, was referred to repeatedly in the Chapter 12 evidence relating to fatalities.

Nevertheless, at the start of each Chapter 12 hearing, Sophie Cartwright QC reminded all concerned: “at no point this afternoon will any still image from body−worn video or the CCTV be displayed” (p. 38).

Saunders writes in the Inquiry report:

The footage from those cameras, much of which I have watched, was harrowing, but it did provide important evidence on a number of issues. Rightly, no one suggested at any stage of the oral evidence hearings that any of that footage should be played publicly. (§13.314)

The public is expected to take Saunders at his word on this. But was there really nothing at all from the body-worn camera footage that was worth showing to the public?

Or was this a ruse to prevent the public from seeing any post-detonation footage, such as the publicly available Barr footage, which shows nothing harrowing, and a completely different scene from that depicted in the official account?

What Happened to the Bodies?

Excluded from the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference is what happened to the bodies of the deceased, and, accordingly, there is virtually no mention of this in the Inquiry report, other than references to post-mortems for each of the 22 victims in Part 18.

Three of the deceased were officially evacuated from the City Room before passing, namely, Saffie-Rose Roussos, John Atkinson, and Georgina Callander.

However, there is no official record of how long the other 19 victims remained in the City Room, where precisely they were located, when exactly they were moved, by whom, or whence they were taken.

As unpleasant as this information is to contemplate, it is fundamental to a full understanding of what happened, and after three long years of a “public” inquiry, the public might reasonably expect to be appraised of it. A brief mention of the basic facts, which is in the public interest, should not be construed as a violation of victims’ dignity.

It is possible to find out some of this information if one is willing to dig. For example, Home Office forensic pathologist, Dr Philip Lumb, who led the post-mortems, was called to give a relatively meagre (compared to other witnesses) 28 minutes of evidence at the Inquiry, in which he laid out some key facts.

Dr Philip Lumb. Source: Manchester Arena Inquiry

Lumb and his colleagues, Dr Naomi Carter and Dr Charles Wilson, arrived at the City Room at 12:27pm on May 23, 2017. When asked by Paul Greaney QC “Were those who had died still at the scene at that time?,” Lumb replied “That is correct, yes.” (00:31:38). He claimed that the bodies of the deceased arrived at Royal Oldham Hospital mortuary later that day (00:41:00), with preparations having been made in the morning for a mass fatality incident (00:28:30).

None of this information made it into the Inquiry report, however, where empirical evidence relating to casualties and fatalities is kept to a bare minimum.

Chapter 12 Evidence (Relating to Fatalities)

Chapter 12 was the part of the Inquiry that dealt with fatalities. It was the only part of the Inquiry where any details relating to injuries were allowed to be mentioned. The framework was provided by DS Lam, DI Russell, and their team at Operation Manteline.

Like Saunders, Sophie Cartwright QC praised

the extensive work that has been undertaken for chapter 12 by Operation Manteline and the team supervised by Detective Superintendent [Teresa Lam] and Detective Inspector Mike Russell. This has included many hundreds of hours analysing the footage from 90 CCTV cameras [Hall counts 44 (§2.3.2.1)], footage from 52 body−worn videos [hardly any apart from Philip Clegg’s are mentioned in the transcripts] and mobile phones [one member of the public is mentioned filming], which has enabled to be extracted from this evidence a clear timetable for each of those who died and details: firstly, their arrival at the arena for the concert; (2) the time when they entered the City Room shortly before the bomb was detonated; (3) their location in the City Room at the time of the detonation; and finally, an analysis from after the detonation at 22.31 and what happened to each of those who died and the details of those who interacted with and assisted them thereafter. (p. 95)

From the CCTV, body-worn camera, and mobile phone footage, the investigators extracted stills and used them to craft Sequences of Events for the 22 who died, as well as a further 77 witnesses who interacted with them (p. 96). The Sequences of Events were then reconciled with witness statements, and 45 witnesses were asked to provide further statements regarding any matters not previously addressed (p. 97).

This sounds, then, like a rigorous methodology that should have produced something approaching a complete and accurate account of events on the night. It is strange, therefore, that so many anomalies can be detected in the official version of events.

Based on the work of Lam and Russell’s team, the Inquiry legal team prepared “detailed evidence notes for each of those who died” and agreed with the families “what evidence should be heard, how, and from whom in chapter 12” (p. 97). Some families wanted more detail to be heard, others less. This meant that not all evidence was heard.

For example, five full days’ worth of evidence (Days 174, 175, 176, 177, and 178) was heard in the case of Saffie-Rose Roussos, involving 27 witnesses being called, taking up around 1,250 pages of the Inquiry transcripts. At the other end of the spectrum, the cases of Chloe Rutherford and Liam Curry involved no witnesses being called and jointly took up only 10 pages of the Inquiry transcripts (end of Day 154). Thus, far more is known in some cases than in others.

Live witness evidence was heard in seven of the 22 cases. In the other 15 cases, an evidence summary was read out as agreed with the family (p. 98). In all cases, DI Russell read out evidence extracted from the Sequence of Events prepared by his team, and other evidence, extracted from witness statements and other sources, was read out by Counsel, along with the medical cause of death (p. 99).

In sum, while the Inquiry worked hard to ensure a blackout on all information relating to casualties and fatalities outside of Chapter 12, the information provided in Chapter 12 was tightly scripted by the Inquiry legal team, based on information provided by DS Lam and DI Russell.

Unless I have missed something (and I am happy to be corrected), this essentially means that the official account of what happened to the 22 can be traced back exclusively to Lam and Russell. In theory, all Saunders needed to do was to instruct his Counsel (a) not to question the findings of Operation Manteline and (b) to censor all discussion of casualties and fatalities outside of Chapter 12, in order for strict narrative control to be maintained.

Volume 3: Covering Up the Role of MI5

I noted in Part 10 that Liz Forster and Ken Upham receive scant treatment in the Inquiry report and that Upham did not appear in person in front of the Inquiry.

Whereas I was able to piece together a large amount of useful information from Volume 2 of the Inquiry Report in terms of making sense of the emergency response (see Part 9), Volume 3 (“Radicalisation and Preventability”) tells us almost nothing useful about “the Security Service” (MI5).

This is because the key information was given during a closed evidence 10-day hearing in which the identity of vastly experienced witnesses, and their evidence, were not revealed for reasons of “national security” (§24.1, §24.12).

Although Saunders claims to be “quite satisfied that having a closed evidence hearing and issuing Volume 3 (closed) as well as Volume 3 (open) was and is justified and necessary” (p. v), the public might reasonably disagree. Although he claims that “I am not prepared merely to rubber-stamp assertions made on behalf of the Security Service and Counter Terrorism Policing (p. v), there is no evidence to back this up in the report, or any way for the public to verify it.

The closed hearing included five witnesses from MI5 and eight from CTPNW (§24.16). Thus, Counter Terrorism Policing was afforded just as much, if not greater, anonymity by Saunders than MI5.

Volume 3 is premised, like the Hashem Abedi trial before it (as reflected in the Sentencing Remarks), on the dubious assumption that Salman Abedi blew himself up in a crowded room using a TATP shrapnel bomb.

Its main sections are: the radicalisation of Salman Abedi, the planning and preparation for the attack, whether the attack could have been prevented, and recommendations.

If Salman Abedi were an operative (see Part 11) and Hashem Abedi were a patsy (see Part 3), then all of this is redundant. In every major terrorist attack conducted on NATO’s Operation Gladio model, it is the “security” services themselves which are to blame, following the Strategy of Tension model. This involves killing innocent civilians to legitimise greater power and resources for the security services, which operate beyond any meaningful democratic oversight and accountability (Hughes, 2024, pp. 92-94).

Saunders’ “findings” in Volume 3 of the Inquiry report are intentionally obfuscatory and useless to the public. For example, the “principal missed opportunity” identified is described as follows:

If further investigative steps arising from Piece of Intelligence 1 had increased the information the Security Service and/or CTPNW [Counter Terrorism Policing North West] had about SA, then this would have increased the overall prospect that the Attack would have been prevented by reason of Piece of Intelligence 2. (§24.66)

This tells us nothing. We have no idea what the “principal missed opportunity” was. We are simply expected to believe the “security failures” narrative, which deflects from possible instigation.

Most of Saunders’ “Recommendations” are concerned with “Ensuring co-operation and attendance at an inquiry.” At least two witnesses, apparently, were recalcitrant and needed better disciplining.

The more important issue of how to prevent a terrorist attack by improving the processes and procedures within MI5 remains classified, the subject of a separate “closed” report (§25.113). MI5 thus remains an opaque, unaccountable power centre as far as the public is concerned.

On February 7, 2022, Saunders published a “gist” of some of the closed evidence as part of his “ongoing commitment to make public as much information as I can” (§24.3). But, as Davis observes, not even the gist withstands scrutiny:

According to the gist, […] MI5 first became aware of Salman Abedi in 2014. Yet, on Day 166 of the inquiry, a reportedly senior MI5 officer called “J” said “we first received information on Salman Abedi on December 30th 2010.” “J” then described how Salman had come to MI5’s attention again in 2013. (Davis, 2024, p. 210)

Thus, the public does not get to find out anything useful about the role of MI5 in relation to the Manchester Arena incident. That would be most convenient, of course, if MI5 played the central role in that incident.

Instead, the public gets psychological operations, in the form of the “security failures” narrative enshrined in Volume 3 of the Inquiry report, MI5’s apology for failing to prevent the attack, and a narrative about “hundreds of people affected by the Manchester Arena bombing” not being allowed to take legal action against MI5 for failing to prevent it (a tacit reminder that MI5 is above the law).

Those Omitted from the Inquiry Report

It is worth noting that certain potentially very important figures are not named in the Inquiry report. They include:

• DCI Sam Pickering, the second-in-command to Operation Manteline (see Part 12);

• DCI Terry Crompton, and Senior Coroner Nigel Meadows, who were present in the City Room at 12:27 on May 23, 2017 (00:28:30-00:32:27);

DCI Terry Crompton. Source: Saddleworth Independent

Senior Coroner Nigel Meadows. Source: The Coroners’ Society of England & Wales

• Dr Jonathan Medcalf, the Home Office pathologist who officially conducted the post-mortem examination on Salman Abedi on May 24, 2017;

• DS Jonathan Chadwick, who, at the first inquest hearing on June 9, 2017, cited a shrapnel bomb as the cause of death for the 22.

DCS Jonathan Chadwick (as he is now). Source: GMP.

• DCI David Warren, who announced on June 16, 2017, that “the force of the explosion severely disrupted Salman Abedi’s body”; and

DCI David Warren in 2010. Source: Manchester Evening News

• Martin McGuffie (see Part 11).

Barely mentioned in the Inquiry report are:

• DCS Simon Barraclough, the head of Operation Manteline (see Part 12);

• DCI Teresa Lam, who was not called to give evidence to the Inquiry (see Part 12); and

• Liz Forster and Ken Upham, senior figures in Counter Terrorism Policing in the North West (see Part 10). Upham did not attend the Inquiry hearings.

Liz Forster. Source: BBC

Ken Upham. Source: LinkedIn

• Ruth Murrell, a notoriously problematic actor (see Part 2), whose only innocuous mention is in §9.92 of the Inquiry report.

Conclusion

Although some of the key defects of the Inquiry were identified already in Part 6, there is plenty more to say.

For example, one question that I have not seen addressed by anyone is why hold a public inquiry in the first place? Saunders’ claim that it was necessary because of the security services’ implication in a violation of the deceased’s Article 2 rights was contradicted in 2020 by the President of the Queen’s Bench Division.

Saunders’ claim that it was necessary to allow for closed hearings in relation to “sensitive material” does not explain why alleged security failures could not have been investigated without the need for a public inquiry. After all, the key findings in relation to those alleged failures remained classified and did not feature on the summaries of evidence for those who died (see Part 18 of the Inquiry report). Why, then, was it necessary to put the families through the anguish of a six-year-long wait before the deaths of their loved ones could be registered?

Even if the Inquiry were necessary, why did it have to be on such a colossal scale? The basic facts around the circumstances of the 22 deaths were officially agreed within days. There was no initial indication that the Inquiry was being established to deal with wider issues of public concern. And it is far from clear that the Inquiry represented value for money when it did deal with such concerns.

I contend that the Inquiry was a ferocious exercise in narrative control by the British State, instigated at a time when potentially explosive doubts about the official narrative were beginning to circulate among the public.

For example, the Inquiry involved extremely tight narrative control around the official fatalities. Unlike for standard inquests, post-mortem reports for the 22 are not publicly available. Instead, a trust exercise was presented, with the public simply expected to believe the State’s account that post-mortems were carried out, and that the results corresponded to the evidence summaries for each of the 22 in Part 18 of the Inquiry report.

The fact that no “survivor” was granted Core Participant status meant that the Inquiry could not be directly influenced by anyone who was present in the City Room at the moment of detonation — one of many devices for keeping the primary evidence at arm’s length.

Instead of manifesting what Saunders predicted would be a “full, fair and fearless” investigation of the circumstances that led to the deaths of 22 people [33], the Inquiry deferred to Operation Manteline on all matters of primary empirical evidence, mostly importantly the post-detonation CCTV footage.

It appears that Operation Manteline handed the Inquiry legal team a summary of the “facts” pre-agreed (one way or another) with witnesses, and the legal team then got the witnesses to confirm those “facts” while under oath. The Inquiry was, thus, heavily pre-scripted.

Key witnesses such as explosives expert Lorna Philp appear to have been manipulated. Philp ended up endorsing official claims about a TATP shrapnel bomb built at Granby Row, based on her trust that Operation Manteline officers had told her the truth about where it had “seized” the various items that were given to her to examine. There are strong reasons to suspect that she may have been lied to, however.

The Inquiry hearings meticulously avoided all detail in relation to casualties and fatalities outside of Chapter 12, in the name of avoiding causing distress to those watching. No body-worn camera footage was played at any point. The Inquiry report makes no mention of what happened to the bodies, and only one of its 25 Parts is devoted to what happened to those who died.

Chapter 12 was tightly scripted by the Inquiry legal team, based on information provided by Operation Manteline's DS Lam and DI Russell. None of the corresponding information contained in the Inquiry report is independently verifiable by the public.

Volume 3 of the Inquiry report is an obvious cover-up of MI5 involvement in the Manchester Arena incident. It tells the public nothing useful. Given that the Inquiry’s official raison d’être was to hear evidence in relation to security failures, this is more than a little disappointing.

We should also be cognisant of what, or who, else is left out of the 1,346 pages of the Inquiry report. For example, DCI Sam Pickering, DCI Terry Crompton, Senior Coroner Nigel Meadows, DS Jonathan Chadwick, and Martin McGuffie all get a pass. DCS Simon Barraclough, DCI Teresa Lam, and CTP’s Liz Forster and Ken Upham are barely mentioned, despite reason to believe they may have played pivotal roles.

In sum, if my hypothesis is correct that the Inquiry was, fundamentally, a gigantic exercise in narrative control, then it was also a symptom of enormous desperation. Only because the official narrative is so weak in relation to the primary empirical evidence would such radically overcompensatory steps be necessary.