Free Flight, Free Speech

As we probably all heard, a lone wolf bomber blew himself up at a Ariana Grande concert yesterday in Manchester. According to the latest reports, 22 people were killed, more than 50 injured. Naturally, ISIS claimed responsibility this morning. Still, at this point, everything seems to indicate, the attack was rather inspired by ISIS than actually controlled.

RIP.

Shocking news.

I found it odd that of all the times, he waited for the concert to end. Maybe he was enjoying the concert way more than he'd liked..?



Also the day after, Jakarta, Indonesia had a bombing as well. 5 killed, 3 police officers, the other 2 are the bombers themselves apparently.

I suspect he didn't attend the concert. The MEN Arena has security stewards monitoring people on the way in and there would have been a good chance of them searching his bag. At the end of an event, there are up to 21,000 people trying to leave at the same time, parents coming to pick their kids up, people meeting in the foyer. So there are lots of people milling around in the main entrance and stewards more focussed on clearing the hall than monitoring people coming in off the street.

Yeah, he probably waited till a lot of people crowded in the ways to the exits. However, something touched me as a bit weird. I saw some photos of what was left of the bomb and it seems, it had additionally to the suicide switch a second remote igniter. So chances are, there was a second guy who, in case the bomber would get cold feet, would blow him up remotely. Given the short distance over which this second guy would have been able to see him, this handler had to be there as well.
We saw something similar at the Belgium airport bombing last year where two suicide bombers were accompanied by a third man who was intentionally not supposed to blow himself up.

Ahh, that made sense.

Seems, the Brits are digging the whole cell up.