Axel Rudakubana, the alleged Southport killer, has been accused of possessing a terrorist document, yet the police still insist there is no evidence of a terrorist motive. How can both be the case?
The document Rudakubana is accused of downloading is a version of the 180-page ‘al-Qaeda training manual’. It is also known as the ‘Manchester manual’ after it was found for the first time by police on a computer in a flat in Cheetham Hill, Manchester in May 2000, more than a year before 9/11.
How can both be the case?
Scotland Yard arrested a man called Abu Anas al-Libi, who rented the flat, as part of an investigation with the FBI into the 1998 al-Qaeda truck bomb attacks on US embassies in East Africa that killed more than 200 people. Libi, real name Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqaii, had moved to the UK several years earlier. He was released 48 hours later and managed to evade a surveillance team sent to follow him, escaping abroad shortly afterwards.
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