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Controversy around the Manchester bombing inquests show our intelligence services must be more accountable

How does anyone know that failings and embarrassment around the attack are not a bigger reason for secrecy than any genuine risk to national security?

Mary Dejevsky
Thursday 03 October 2019 20:59 BST
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MI5 admit failing to track Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi

The Conservative Party conference was not the only place in Manchester where urgent behind-the-scenes discussions were going on this week. Something similar was happening, if rather more quietly and confidentially, in and around the coroner’s court.

More than two years after the bombing at the Manchester Arena, which killed 23 people and injured more than 100, a controversy has erupted about the form that the inquests which are required by law should take, what evidence should be heard, and how.

It is a controversy that is all too predictable. It centres yet again on the balance that has to be drawn in any democratic, law-governed, country between accountability and transparency, on the one hand, and the requirements of national security, on the other.

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