Manchester Bomber Met With ISIS Unit in Libya, Officials Say<br />On visits to Tripoli as well as to the coastal Libyan town of Sabratha, Mr. Abedi met with operatives of the Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, a core Islamic State unit<br />that was headquartered in Syria before some of its members dispersed to Libya.<br />If the content of the call was sensitive, Mr. Abedi used phones<br />that were disposable, or dispatches were sent from Libya by his contacts to his "friend" — living in Germany or Belgium — who then sent it to Mr. Abedi in Britain, according to the former intelligence chief.<br />An investigation later indicated that the perpetrators in the two attacks in Tunisia had trained in the same Islamic State camp in Libya in Sabratha, the same city<br />that Mr. Abedi is believed to have visited to meet members of the Battar brigade.<br />Mr. Abedi’s contacts with the Battar brigade members in Libya — though not the details of the methods used to communicate or the specific<br />locations — were confirmed by a senior United States intelligence official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.<br />That escalation continued until two days before President Barack Obama left office, specifically because officials feared<br />that the Islamic State was moving its infrastructure for external operations to Libya, said a former senior United States counterterrorism official, who has left government and spoke on the condition of anonymity to not violate the individual’s company privacy policy.<br />Mr. Colquhoun said that When I looked at the Islamic State, the same thing was happening,<br />By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and ERIC SCHMITTJUNE 3, 2017<br />The bomber who killed 22 people at a pop concert in Manchester, England, last month had met in Libya with members of an Islamic<br />State unit linked to the November 2015 Paris terrorist attack, according to current and retired intelligence officials.
