Manchester Arena attack brother created 'slaughter' email address

An email address which translated from Arabic as "to slaughter we have come" was linked to the Manchester Arena attacker's brother and used to buy a bomb-making chemical, a jury has heard.

Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb outside an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May 2017, killing 22 people.

Hashem Abedi has denied 22 counts of murder and other charges.

A Gmail account using the Arabic phrase "bedab7jeana" was created in March 2017, his Old Bailey trial heard.

Duncan Penny QC, prosecuting, said it was created in Hulme Market, Manchester, where analysis of telephone and number-plate evidence has placed 22-year-old Hashem Abedi.

The following month, he said, the email address was provided to Amazon when a "successful purchase" of hydrogen peroxide took place.

Mr Penny said a "literal translation" from Arabic of the phrase was "to slaughter we have come" and when the Abedi family home in Fallowfield was searched after the attack, the address was found on a torn-up note in a bin outside.

Later, the jury was told the brothers' plans to stockpile chemicals were "thrown into disarray" when they crashed a car they had been using to transport them to an address in Rusholme they were renting.

Mr Penny said their Toyota Aygo, which they had bought for £250, was written off in the crash in Fallowfield on 23 March 2017.

He said they had reacted "unkindly to the interest of others in the collision and were abusive to the other driver", and witnesses noticed a number of cardboard boxes in the back seat.

He added there had been attempts to remove the labels on the boxes when it was discovered the Aygo could not be repaired.

Jurors were also told the brothers visited a hardware superstore in Stockport at the end of March where their mother's card was used to buy a claw hammer, hacksaw, metal cutters and pliers.

Mr Penny added that the pair bought a Nissan Micra, which he previously described as a "de-facto storage facility", on 13 April.

It was bought quickly "after a brief examination... and a test drive", he said, and collected at 23:30 BST in an "episode" which "smacks of real urgency".

The car - which was found in Rusholme after the bombing - had Hashem Abedi's fingerprints inside, along with bags of screws and nails handled by the defendant and more than 10 litres of sulphuric acid in the boot, he said.

He said further examination found traces of the chemical compound used in the explosion "on the driver's seat and in other areas of the car", adding: "Has all this happened under this defendant's nose without him realising anything about what was really going on, as he was later to claim?"

Hashem Abedi denies 22 counts of murder along with charges of attempted murder and conspiring to cause an explosion.

The case continues.