The claim - denied by the security service - was made as the families take legal action over missed chances to stop the attack
MI5 'lacked candour' when it gave evidence to the Manchester Arena bomb inquiry and other reviews of the atrocity, a lawyer representing families affected by the outrage has told a tribunal.
Lawyers representing more than 250 people caught up in the attack at the Ariana Grande concert have submitted a claim to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal , arguing evidence of missed intelligence only emerged during the public inquiry, which submitted its final report in March 2023. He argued the two pieces of intelligence - details of which have never been made public - had to be seen in context and not as 'bits of information floating about in the ether'.
MI5's assessment 'should not have been carried out in a vacuum', said Mr Wetherby, who described the agency's stance as 'retrospective justification of actions taken or not taken'. He said Sir John had 'rejected the corporate picture' after hearing from MI5 officers during secret sessions of the public inquiry and decided that the two pieces of information were actually 'pressing national security concerns'.
He said that included giving the inquiry MI5's 'post-attack review', which he said Sir John accepted was prepared 'at a fast pace', 'was comprehensive' and was 'an impressively detailed piece of work given the circumstances in which it was written'. Its review was 'self-critical'.
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