A mosque attended by Salman Abedi and members of his family has called for anyone with information about the bombing to contact the police and attempted to distance itself from the attacker.

In a strongly worded statement, Didsbury mosque and Manchester Islamic Centre called the bombing an act of cowardice and insisted it had worked peacefully at the heart of the community for half a century.

But the mosque and centre refused to answer questions about Abedi’s links with them. The Guardian has learned that his father worked at the mosque before leaving for Tripoli and one of the imams, Mohammed Saeed, has described how Abedi attended regularly and had once looked at him “with hate” when he gave a sermon criticising Isis and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya.

Though the mosque has emphasised that Muslims from many different parts of the world are among its worshippers, there is a strong Libyan element.

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