国际英语新闻:Cousins of Manchester suicide bomber say have no idea he was a terrorist

LONDON, June 2 (Xinhua) -- Two cousins of Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi said Friday they had no idea he was a planning his terror mission.

Brothers, Isaac and Abz Forjani were among 16 people arrested by police after the suicide bombing on May 22. They were held in custody for a week and were then released without any charges being brought against them. Ten people, including the younger sibling of the two Forjani brothers are still being questioned by detectives.

The two brothers spoke in a BBC interview as police in Manchester released new images of Abedi causally making his way through the city center just hours before the attack at the Manchester Arena which killed 22 people and injured a further 116 were injured.

The two brothers said they last saw Abedi three months before the attack, when he got his hair trimmed at Abz Forjani's barber shop.

Abz Forjani, 21, described his relationship with Abedi as "pretty close", adding he did not think he was part of "a big network".

He said: "I believe it was all done by one man (Abedi), who developed some sort of thoughts in the past few years which he kept to himself, secretly to himself. He never shared it with any members of the family. If he would of, we could have done something to stop that happening.

Abz Forjani added: "He never admitted extremist views, it was just political opinions, so it wasn't focused or aimed at a particular group. The thought was he was just a religious man taking it way too far, becoming judgemental maybe. There's never been a hint of extremism."

Isaac Forjani, who is 24, said: "It's not easy being connected to 22 lost, innocent lives. The fact that the person that did this is related to us by blood is something that's going to stay with me for the rest of my life. My thoughts are with the families of the victims. I really do feel for them."

Police in Manchester hope the new images may help people come forward if they remember seeing Abedi on the day of the attack or in the days before.

Dr Chris Murphy, an intelligence expert and senior lecturer at the University of Salford, said the attack on Manchester demonstrated that intelligence is not an exact science.

He was responding after it was disclosed Britain's secret service MI5 is conducting two separate inquiries into the bombing and the terrorist responsible.

"The thing that strikes me is that it takes an act of atrocity to really bring out that intelligence is not an exact science. It therefore follows that intelligence agencies are going to be subject to things going wrong. We can never be confident of stopping everything.

"We have a world of fiction with spies such as James Bond 007, all knowing and all seeing, and it takes an event like Manchester to bring us back to sad reality.

"It is important that they are having the investigation to find out what has happened and what went wrong, if indeed did go wrong."

Murphy posed the question of whether the secret service in Britain, with its staff level of 4,000, could be expected to handle the number of cases it currently faces.

Reports indicated Britain's secret service currently has 3,000 people under active investigation.

"It means people are going to have to make judgement call," said Murphy.

Murphy questioned whether there was sufficient "joined up thinking" between various agencies working in intelligence and radicalisation programs.

"It comes down to the old adage that intelligence failures become well known, but successes never see the light of day."