Manchester bomber’s mother is a nuclear scientist

• Salman Abedi’s mother, 50, graduated top of her class at Tripoli University
• Samia Tabbal is also a close friend of the wife of a former Al Qaeda commander
• A family friend said Salman’s parents would be ‘very shocked’ by the suicide bombers actions
• It came as six men and one woman have been arrested in connection with the attack in the UK and two more men in Tripoli 

  Bomber Salman Abedi’s mother is a nuclear scientist, a family friend revealed last night.

  Samia Tabbal, 50, graduated from Tripoli university ‘top of her class’, it was said.

  It also emerged she is a close friend of the wife of a former Al Qaeda commander who once featured on the FBI’s World’s Most Wanted Terrorists list with a £20million bounty on his head.

  The Al Qaeda veteran, Abu Anas al-Libi, spent five years in Manchester – having won political asylum in Britain in 1995.

  He was later suspected of helping to plot the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The near-simultaneous atrocities in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi killed 224 people and left 4,500 people injured.

  His wife Umm Abdul Rahman revealed yesterday she went to college in the Libyan capital with Abedi’s mother, who was studying nuclear engineering. She said the two women also lived together in Manchester for a number of years.

  Al-Libi returned to Libya from the UK in 2000, and was captured by U.S. Special Forces from a street in Tripoli in 2013. He died in custody two years later aged 50.

  Last night a close family friend told the Mail: ‘I am sure Salman’s mother and father are very shocked by what he did.

  ‘It is very sad because their mother is very intelligent. She told my wife that she was a nuclear science engineer and that she got excellent marks in her exams. She graduated top of her class from Tripoli University.’

  Another top jihadist with links to south Manchester is master bombmaker Abd al-Baset Azzouz, 48, once listed by the U.S. as one of the 10 most dangerous global terrorists.

Source: Manchester bomber’s mother is a nuclear scientist | Daily Mail Online