Manchester attack: 'Trainee pilot' arrested as investigation spreads across Britain


A "trainee pilot" has been arrested as the investigation into the terror network behind Salman Abedi spreads across Britain.

The 23-year-old, understood to be Libyan, was arrested at a property in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, more than 260 miles from the Manchester Arena where Abedi detonated a suicide bomb a week ago killing 22 people.

Violet Mainda, the Kenyan-born owner of Violet’s Hairdresser’s beneath the flat, said: “He was a young Libyan guy who was always very jovial and nice.


“He said he was training to be a pilot at Shoreham Airfield and he had just completed doing that. I am really, really shocked by this. I can’t believe he had been arrested.

“He had a few friends and a girlfriend and always seemed very nice. I don’t know if he worked, I think he just studied to be a pilot. He said he was studying to become a pilot at Shoreham.”

Armed officers also swooped on sites across Manchester in a flurry of raids and arrests over the weekend as they worked to stamp out any lingering threat from co-conspirators to Monday's massacre

The Sussex arrest early on Monday morning brings the number of people in custody in relation to the the attack to 14.

Shoreham Airfield said that they did not have anyone available to comment.

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