RUTHFULLY YOURS

Abedi was part of an Arabic-speaking “clique” during his time at the school, The Times reports.

He is believed to have been part of a group of teens that became upset when one of their teachers brought up the topic of suicide attacks.

The teacher “asked what they thought of someone who would strap on a bomb and blow people up”, according to a source quoted by the paper.

The source said the boys then went to their RE teacher and lodged a complaint, telling them it was “Islamophobic”.

The source added: “[Abedi] was a silly boy, not very serious. He was not smart enough to be a mastermind of anything like that.”

A spokesperson for Burnage Academy said yesterday: “We feel the pain that Manchester feels. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Mancunians against terrorism in all forms.”

Pals of the evil killer yesterday revealed his wild youth of booze and drug-taking – and how he was nicknamed “Dumbo” because of his big ears.

Pictures show him grinning in a bar with three student friends and on a beach in Libya, before he is thought to have been indoctrinated.

Pals described the brainy Manchester United fan as “very jolly”.

But over the past two years he is said to have changed completely after a number of trips to Libya to visit his family.

His parents are even said to have confiscated his passport amid fears he was being radicalised.

This week it was claimed Abedi called his family in Tripoli 15 ­minutes before the attack.

His mother Samia Tabbal, 50, and father Ramadan, 51, a security officer, were born in the Libyan capital.

They emigrated to London before moving to Manchester.

Manchester-born Abedi is believed to have regularly travelled to see his family, who moved back to Tripoli following the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

One friend said: “He became silent and withdrawn after a trip a ­couple of years ago. Before then he was a happy-go-lucky kid and always did well in school.

“We used to party together. He loved being around his friends and wasn’t a strict Muslim at all.

“He even used to drink alcohol and loved smoking weed, he never mentioned religion.

The prime minister of Poland has launched a blistering attack on the “political elites” of Europe in the wake of the Manchester terror attack, warning the continent must put in place “strong politicians” willing to tackle the threat or risk “crying over your children”.

Speaking in the Polish Parliament on Wednesday, Beata Szydło seized the moment to launch an excoriating attack on European Union leaders following the Manchester attack which, among others, claimed the lives of a Polish couple, leaving their two daughters as orphans.

“We are not going to take part in the madness of the Brussels elite,” she railed. “We want to help people, not the political elites.

“Where are you headed Europe?” she demanded. “Rise from your knees and from your lethargy or you will be crying over your children every day.

“If you can’t see this – if you can’t see that terrorism currently has the potential to hurt every country in Europe, and you think that Poland should not defend itself, you are going hand in hand with those who point this weapon against Europe, against all of us.

“It needs to be said clearly and directly: This is an attack on Europe, on our culture, on our traditions.”

Addressing the people of Europe, she asked: “Do we want politicians who claim we have to get used to the attacks, and who describe terrorist attacks as incidents, or do we want strong politicians who can see the danger and can fight against it efficiently?”

Szydło’s Government is currently locked in a battle with Brussels over Commission plans for every member state who is signed up to the Common European Asylum System to take in a quota of migrants from Greece and Italy as a solidarity measure.

The previous Polish Government agreed in 2015 to take in 4,500-5,000 migrants, the commitment increased by the EU to 6,200, but Szydło’s administration reversed that decision upon taking power and has promised instead to give aid to people in refugee camps in the Middle East.

Brussels has responded by issuing threats of sanctions if no migrants are taken by June. The same threat has been made to Hungary, which also has yet to take any migrants in under the quota system.

Following the terrorist attack in Manchester that left at least 22 people dead and dozens injured, many of them children, President Donald Trump referred to terrorists as “evil losers in life.” As expected, a number of liberal pundits mocked the president’s unrefined language. So jejune, you know?

Inadvertently or not, Trump landed on a plain-spoken stinging moniker that happens to be true. No matter how many people the next Salman Abedi ends up killing, theocratic dead-enders are losers in every societal, ideological, and historical sense. Perhaps some blunt language will lead to some clearer thinking on the issue.

Now, it’s debatable whether it matters very much to would-be terrorists what unpleasant names Trump has in store for them. How we talk about terrorism, on the other hand, is important. Over the past eight years (at least), the topic has been obscured by clinical euphemisms and feel-good platitudes for the sake of winning hearts and minds. How’s that going?

If unkind words about Islam – Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, for instance — offer “aid and comfort” to the Islamic State group or compel more Muslims to blow up pressure cookers filled with nails to kill infidel children, that illustrates what might be a terrible truth about the state of Islam, not about American society.

Leaders in Western nations have gone out of their way to craft rhetoric that circumvents Islam completely when speaking about terrorism. We’re hooked on platitudes, such as “man-caused disaster,” treating terrorism as some kind of spontaneous criminal event, rather than a tactic used predominantly by one ideology. At the same time, the Left has been transforming tolerance into a creed that means accepting illiberalism. Their overcompensation to imagined backlashes has given real-life excuses to ignore the pervasive violence, misogyny, homophobia, child abuse, tyranny, anti-Semitism, bigotry against Christians, etc., that exist in large parts of Islamic society. Saying, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” as President Obama did, makes every critic a hater.

After every Manchester or Paris or Nice, we are immediately instructed to watch our language and tone. Because love is love. You might remember former attorney general Loretta Lynch telling an LGBT group on the heels of the mass Islamic killing at a gay club in Orlando, Fla., that the “most effective” weapon Americans have to fight terrorism is love.

The Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, police believe.

Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training.

Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs at a jihadist training camp.It comes as Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said detectives had made “immense progress” in dismantling Abedi’s terror network.

In further developments, a barber shop in Manchester was raided with one theory that Abedi may have obtained hydrogen peroxide – a chemical used in the hairdressing industry but which can also be used to construct bombs – from the salon.

Abedi’s finances are a major ‘theme’ of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing.

One former detective said jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up”.

Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015.

It is thought he received a further £7,000 in the 2016 academic year even though by then he had already dropped out of the course. Salford University declined to say if it had informed the Student Loans Company that Abedi’s funding should have been stopped.

Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions refused to say if Abedi had received any benefits, including housing benefit and income support worth up to £250 a week, during 2015 and 2016. It would only say he was not claiming benefits in the weeks before the attack.

Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya.

Abedi also had sufficient funds to buy materials for his sophisticated bomb while living in a rented house in south Manchester.

Six weeks before the bombing Abedi rented a second property in a block of flats in Blackley eight miles from his home, paying £700 in cash.

He had enough money to rent a third property in the centre of Manchester from where he set off with a backpack containing the bomb.