Brother of Manchester suicide bomber charged over attack on jail guards

LONDON (Reuters) -A man who helped his brother plot a suicide bomb attack at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in Britain in 2017 was charged on Wednesday with attempting to murder prison guards in the jail where he was being held.

Hashem Abedi, the elder brother of Salman Abedi who killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena in northern England, was charged with five offences following an incident in April this year at HMP Frankland jail when four prison officers were injured, British police said.

He is accused of three counts of attempted murder, one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and one count of unauthorised possession of a knife. He is due to appear at London's Westminster Magistrates Court on September 18.

Hashem Abedi was jailed for at least 55 years in 2020 after being convicted of helping his brother plan the attack which injured more than 200 and whose victims included seven children.

The brothers, born to Libyan parents who emigrated to Britain during the rule of late leader Muammar Gaddafi, had plotted the attack at their home in south Manchester, prosecutors said.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar)