The legacy of the public inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing must be to 'change the face of counter-terrorism' and guarantee 'accountability' at all public venues in the future, the mother of one of the 22 who lost their lives in the atrocity has said.
After 30 months of harrowing but crucially important evidence, the inquiry will finally come to an end later today (Thursday, March 2) with the publication of the chairman's final report of three - a volume widely expected to heap criticism on MI5 and counter-terrorism policing over the monitoring through the years of mass murderer Salman Abedi.
The evidence heard by the inquiry as a whole, it was said, would likely have an 'enduring effect' on Greater Manchester and its people forever.
But it must, in memory of the 22 and their families, go a great deal further and lead to real, visible change nationally and internationally in terms of emergency services planning and preparation, venue security, training and awareness and understanding, said Figen Murray, who lost her son Martyn, 29, in the terror attack of May, 2017.
Figen tours schools speaking to students to promote radicalisation awareness and has revealed today she has visited Abedi's former high school in Burnage several times. Ahead of the report's publication, she told the Manchester Evening News she would like to have spoken to a young Abedi.
Today's report has been compiled on evidence heard surrounding the planning and preparation that was carried out for the attack by the Abedi brothers, the radicalisation of Salman Abedi and whether the atrocity could have been prevented. It's likely to address what was known by the security services and counter-terror policing prior to the atrocity, but wide redactions are expected as certain evidence was heard behind closed doors for reasons of national security.
"There have been lots of missed opportunities and I am often wondering had anyone gone to the school, his school, earlier, what could have happened," Figen said.
"When he was a student, had somebody gone into that school and done the talk that I do to young people, warning people about radicalism and how to recognise the signs, maybe some of his friends might have recognised signs of radicalisation in him. Maybe he would have heard my story and thought 'well that's a dreadful thing to happen, maybe I need to reconsider what I want to do'. So who knows?
"Had he been given the right voices, had he heard the right voices, perhaps something may have changed in his head. This could have been averted. Who knows?
"I can't measure the success of my school talks, but one measure of success would be if after one of my talks a school would ring me and say, 'we've had an approach from a child and they have asked for help'.
"You can teach a child about terrorism, but when you hear a lived experience, it is a bit different. I talk to the children about how hard it was to see Martyn at the mortuary and at the Arena, going back to the spot where he took his last breath. That impacts on children. It is about giving them the reality of how it affects people."
Families who lost loved ones in the outrage, the deadliest terrorist attack in the UK since the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, were praised for their 'dignity' as hearings drew to a close in February of last year. There were 13 preliminary hearings before the inquiry began back in September, 2020, and 194 days of oral evidence given in total up until February, 2022. Over that period, the inquiry heard from 267 witnesses - and from as many as 24 expert witnesses.
Around 172,000 pages of documentation were disclosed to legal representatives of interested parties, including the bereaved families. The YouTube feed of the proceedings - which ran almost every day of the inquiry - has been viewed more than 700,000 times by people in 46 countries.
Split into 14 chapters, the inquiry has examined all aspects of the terror attack in painstaking detail with hearings continuing remotely through the Covid pandemic lockdown. There's been scathing criticism of the emergency services for their advanced preparations and response on the evening, and criticism of the venue.
But inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders, a retired High Court judge who presided over its many long days with an air of calm, real interest and intellect, said in his first report his 'overarching impression' was that 'inadequate attention' was given to the national level of terrorist threat.
Figen, who attended the inquiry in person whenever she could, agrees. "The whole thing has, for me, been a massive opportunity for a lot of services to improve things," she said. "I already know that the emergency services and the police have made loads of changes. Everybody's hearts are in the right place.
"But there was an 'oh, it won't happen' kind of thinking at the time. People weren't sharp enough at the time and we are paying the price for it as a family.
"I want improvements to happen all across the board, from MI5 to emergency services, to security - everything. Terrorism is very real. It's not going to go away, by no means. It's a threat that can happen anytime, anywhere, anyplace."
"As a general public, I think we all need to be a bit more alert."
Figen said the public inquiry must 'change the face of counter-terrorism' and 'change the face of accountability at venues'. "Nobody should play the blame game, everybody ought to take responsibility for their own actions and for their own venues," she said. "We all need to work together."
Intelligence about Abedi received by MI5 in the months before the bombing was 'not fully appreciated', but was later classed as being 'highly relevant' to the attack, the inquiry heard.
On May 8 - two weeks before the bombing - he was referred to an MI5 process to assess whether he had 're-engaged in Islamist extremist activity' and his case, together with the cases of 26 others, was due to be looked at again at a meeting on May 31, a meeting tragically pencilled in for after the bombing.
At the time, suicide bomber Abedi was a 'closed subject of interest' but 'continued to be referenced from time-to-time' in intelligence reports, an official report into the terror attacks in the UK in 2017 stated.
MI5, said Figen, should have 'joined the dots a bit quicker'. "Nine days after the attack he would have had a review. That should have happened earlier, I wish, but who knows if it could have stopped the attack?" she said.
For her, there's no real sense of closure with the inquiry drawing to a close. "It has been a long time," she said. "People often say to me 'oh, can you draw a line under it now and does it give you some peace?'
"Do you feel justice has been done? My view is no, there is never a line I can draw under anything really because we lost our child and as a parent, you never draw a line under that. It's a forever battle that you are going to have, but with the inquiry coming to an end, it's the end of a massive chapter within our life.
"Our grieving continues forever. People say does that give you closure? No, of course it doesn't. There is no closure on a family's grief unfortunately. The severity and the brutality of the way they were taken from us makes it very difficult for us to have closure.
"To me, personally, I was totally astounded as to the massive amount of things that went wrong. Not just with one agency or one department or one system.
"The sheer amount of mistakes and failings and missed opportunities...I know that it could have been avoided had everybody done what they should have done and if everyone paid more attention, from the security guards right up to MI5."
Terrorism, she said, was an 'on-going threat that never stops'. "These people who want to hurt the fabric of our society...they always appear to be a step or two ahead of us and we need to catch up. Generally, we need to step up."
"Right across the board there have been a whole catalogue of errors, mistakes and missed opportunities - things that should have been handled better and differently. I am hoping that the inquiry, now it's unearthed all this, that systems are being tightened and things are being improved all round."
Figen said there was a 'massive patchwork of errors'. "That's been the biggest revelation for me, but I have faith in it," she said.
"Those people who made mistakes, the police, counter-terrorism, the ambulance, fire service whatever...standing in the witness stand couldn't have been very easy. Apologising to the families couldn't have been easy. But most importantly, anybody who made a mistake or failed to do something knows they have done so and they face themselves in the mirror everyday. That's a tough thing.
"I have faith that people are trying to rectify the mistakes."
Greater Manchester Police estimate there were 940 victims of the attack who survived. Of those, 337 people were in the City Room blast zone at the time of the explosion and a further 92 people were in the immediate vicinity. Of the victims, 237 people were physically injured. A total of 111 people required hospital treatment, with 91 categorised as being seriously or very seriously injured.
The third report from the Manchester Arena public inquiry is due to be published today at 2pm.
