Manchester Arena bomb-plotter Hashem Abedi is being held at County Durham’s maximum-security Frankland Prison, a court has heard.

The prison is one of three with separation centres, dubbed “jails within jails”, which were first announced in 2017 to tackle extremism behind bars.

Abedi, 23, was found guilty by a jury in March of 22 counts of murder, attempted murder and plotting to cause an explosion likely to endanger life.

His older brother, Salman Abedi, who was 22, detonated the suicide bomb in the foyer of Manchester Arena at 10.31pm on May 22 2017, as thousands of men, women and children left a concert by pop star Ariana Grande.

Abedi was handed a record-length sentence in August for his role in the attack, which killed 22 people and injured hundreds of others.

He could die behind bars after being handed 24 life sentences with a minimum term of 55 years before he can be considered for parole.

It emerged during a hearing at the Old Bailey on Thursday he is being held at Frankland Prison, which has housed other notorious inmates, including Fusilier Lee Rigby’s terrorist killer Michael Adebolajo, Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, and Charles Bronson.

The trial judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, confirmed that Abedi will be subject to a 30-year notification order if he is ever freed, following a prosecution oversight during the original sentencing hearing.

The judge said the prison authorities at HMP Frankland had offered Abedi the chance to provide a response ahead of the hearing.

“Mr Abedi made it clear that he didn’t wish to do so and confirmed that he didn’t request to be present at this hearing,” he added.

It is not known whether Abedi is being held in the jail’s separation centre – the only one currently in use in England and Wales, although Full Sutton and Woodhill also have them available.

Inmates can be moved to the specialist units if they are linked to terror plotting or considered to pose a risk to national security.

The Abedi brothers, from Fallowfield in south Manchester, spent months ordering, stockpiling and transporting the deadly materials for the terror attack, using multiple mobile phones, addresses and runaround vehicles to make their bomb.

They joined their parents in Libya the month before the blast, but Salman returned to the UK on May 18.

He bought the final components needed for the bomb, rented a flat in the city centre in which to build it, and carried out reconnaissance on the arena before finally executing the plot – the final moments of which were caught on CCTV.

The 22 people who were killed were: off-duty police officer Elaine McIver, 43; Saffie Roussos, eight; Sorrell Leczkowski, 14; Eilidh MacLeod, 14; Nell Jones, 14; Olivia Campbell-Hardy, 15; Megan Hurley, 15; Georgina Callander, 18; Chloe Rutherford, 17; Liam Curry, 19; Courtney Boyle, 19; Philip Tron, 32; John Atkinson, 28; Martyn Hett, 29; Kelly Brewster, 32; Angelika Klis, 39; Marcin Klis, 42; Michelle Kiss, 45; Alison Howe, 44; Lisa Lees, 43; Wendy Fawell, 50; and Jane Tweddle, 51.

A small area of south Manchester has been home to more than 20 terrorists and terror suspects all within a three-mile radius of Salman Abedi’s home.

In recent years, at least 24 people have been tracked by the PA news agency living close to the neighbourhood in Fallowfield the Abedis called home.

They have included at least two other suicide bombers, a leading IS recruiter and twin “poster girls” for the jihadi cause.

Before that, al Qaida commander Anas al-Libi lived in south Manchester.

Salman Abedi, born, raised and educated in the city, left school with few qualifications, had poor English and his only educational achievements were studying Arabic.

He joined the same violent few from an area centred around Moss Side and Whalley Range that has seen a now well-worn path to radicalisation.

Abedi’s own family came to the UK in 1992 from Libya, among the 430% increase since 1991 in people of African origin living in Manchester, according to figures from the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity at Manchester University.

On the first anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Chief Constable Ian Hopkins maintained radicalisation was a national problem, not one specific to Manchester.

He told PA that people being drawn into extremism was a problem the whole of the UK must face.

Just 18 months before the bombing, a report titled Rethinking Radicalisation was commissioned by Manchester City Council to “assess the current state of community relations and radicalisation in Manchester”.

It noted widespread criticism of the Government’s deradicalisation programme titled Prevent.

Another persistent theme in the report was the issue of radicalisation, which was “undeniable” in Manchester, according to some youngsters cited by the report, with particular concern over extremism among teenagers and young adults.

The report also spoke of “parallel communities” living side by side but barely integrating.

After the arena bombing, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham commissioned a report, A Shared Future, on tackling extremism and promoting social cohesion.

It concluded radicalisation had no single driver with no single solution and repeated the fears of persecution amongst Muslims of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.

It also noted a 130% increase in hate crimes and 500% increase in anti-Muslim hate crime in the weeks following the bombing.

In October last year, Manchester’s myriad of counter-extremism initiatives and projects were joined in the city by Coin, the Cohesion and Integration Network, a new national charity to strengthen good community relations.

In the same month, GCHQ, an intelligence and security organisation working with MI5 and MI6, also announced it would open offices in the city.

At the Old Bailey trial of Hashem Abedi, one witness from the Midlands described how the defendant asked him to buy acid, which can be used to manufacture explosives.

He was warned not to do it.

When he asked why, his father told him because Hashem was “from Manchester”.

An Islamic State fan plotted a “lone wolf” attack on the British army or police using a specially-adapted drone, knives, axes and Japanese “Ninja eggs”, a court has heard.

Hisham Muhammad, 25, amassed an array of weapons at his three-bedroom rented terrace in Whitefield, Bury, including a tomahawk, a machete and bear-claws, the Old Bailey was told.

He had also set about making a prototype of a drone attachment using lollipop sticks to drop a projectile or “harmful” device on his target, it was claimed.

He had allegedly researched police and army bases, including Castle Armoury Barracks in Bury, Greater Manchester, which he visited before his arrest last June.

The Bermudan national, who moved to Britain in 2013, had allegedly helped fund his activities with money from a bogus online escort agency scam.

He was caught after his landlord spotted  “suspicious” items at the defendant’s home including knives, a tub of wires and a soldering iron, the court heard.

Jurors were told his landlord had visited the property after Muhammad and his cousin Faisal Abu Ahmad, 24, had fallen behind with their rent.

In a search, police uncovered the stash of weapons as well as lollipop sticks attached to an electrical component with black tape and various wires, jurors heard.

Some of the components allegedly matched sketches and detailed notes for adapting a drone.

Muhammad’s interest in the devices dated back to late 2017 or early 2018 when he had called next door to retrieve a small drone from his neighbour’s back garden, jurors heard.

Officers also seized two painted eggs containing crushed chilli seeds and shards of glass which were described as Japanese “ninja eggs”.

Prosecutor Anne Whyte QC said Muhammad had steeped himself in “barbarous” Islamic State propaganda as he planned a “lone wolf” attack in Britain.

An examination of Muhammad’s tablet computer revealed an IS video entitled My Revenge had been watched eight times between May 21 and May 30 last year.

Ms Whyte said the video in French justified and encouraged “lone wolf attacks” in France and Europe, and included gruesome footage of executions.

The defendant had trawled the internet for postcodes in Westminster and central Manchester, knives, drones and British armed police, jurors heard.

On May 21 last year, he allegedly researched suicide belts, machetes and Victoria train station which had been part of the scene of the Manchester Arena terror attack a year before.

Two days later, Muhammad visited an army recruitment event in Bury town centre and the nearby Castle Armoury Barracks where expressed an interest in joining up, jurors were told.

It was claimed the defendant went on to Google “weak points of the human body for assault” as well as armed police in UK and Manchester.

In a police interview, Muhammad denied planning an attack, saying he had a “gift from god for making things and liked to innovate”.

The court heard he had cast doubt that the Manchester Arena bombing and Westminster Bridge attack had happened and questioned whether video of Fusilier Lee Rigby’s killing was real.

Ms Whyte told jurors: “We allege Hisham Muhammad intended to commit an act of terrorism – he plainly considered and researched the use of a drone to drop some sort of harmful device.

“That, we say, was always going to present technical challenges and he combined an anticipated use of a drone with plans to use knives or other bladed items in order to stab human targets.

“Whatever his final approach to an adapted drone, by the time of his arrest, he had plainly resolved to commit some sort of knife attack instead.”

Muhammad of Victoria Avenue, Whitefield, Bury, denies engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism.

Abu Ahmad, of the same address, has pleaded not guilty to failing to alert authorities of the alleged attack plan.