During the evening of 22nd May 2017, the Arena was the venue for a concert by Ariana Grande, an American singer with a large fan base. The concert was attended by over 14,000 people, many of whom were teenagers and children.

• 23 people were killed
• 1017 people were injured
• Hashem Abedi was convicted to Life imprisonment in 2020

KEY FINDINGS
• The device created by SA and HA was designed to kill and injure as many people as possible.
• SA and HA are likely to have developed their ability to construct their device from viewing an Islamic State
instructional video that was at one stage available online, and also from training they received in Libya in 2016.
• SA and HA took extensive steps to avoid detection in the period prior to their departure for Libya on 15th April 2017
and SA continued those steps following his return to the UK on 18th May 2017.
• The police investigation into the Attack, Operation Manteline, was effective, impressive and professional.
• HA confessed his involvement in the Attack revealing that he and SA were motivated by adherence to Islamic State.
• The evidence, while creating reasonable suspicions regarding other individuals, is insufficient to establish on the
balance of probabilities that any of those who participated in the acquisition of precursor chemicals knew that those
chemicals were to be used in a bomb. However, there were people in Libya who probably knew what SA intended to