phone was last used at 9:23 am on the morning of the bombing, just three minutes after the bombers had parked their van in Corporation Street. On 27 June, the phone's registered owner reported that it had been stolen 17 days earlier, but the police felt they had gathered enough evidence to bring a prosecution against the six IRA men held in London. At a meeting attended by the commander of Special Branch in Manchester, a GMP assistant chief constable and a "senior officer" from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), it was decided, for reasons never made public, not to present the findings of the investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the body responsible for undertaking criminal prosecutions in England. The three may have felt that as the IRA suspects were already in police custody they were no longer a threat, or that to pursue the case against them may have jeopardised ongoing undercover operations. It was not until 1998 that the police finally sent their file to the CPS, who decided not to prosecute. In September 2022, a man was arrested in connection with the bombing. According to GMP, the suspect was held at Birmingham Airport on 8 September on suspicion of terrorism offences and will be interviewed by officers from Counter Terrorism Policing for the North West (CTPNW). Leak Early in 1999, Steve Panter, chief crime reporter for the Manchester Evening News, leaked classified Special Branch documents naming those suspected of the bombing. The documents also revealed that the man suspected of organising the attack had visited Manchester shortly after the bombing and been under covert police surveillance as he toured the devastated city centre before returning to his home in South Armagh. Suspicion fell on Mutch as the source of the leaked documents after an analysis of mobile phone records placed both him and Panter at the same hotel in Skipton, North Yorkshire, about from Manchester on the same evening. On 21 April 1999, the Manchester Evening News named a man it described as "a prime suspect in the 1996 Manchester bomb plot". The newspaper reported that the file sent by GMP to the Crown Prosecution Service contained the sentence: "It is the opinion of the investigating officers of GMP that there is sufficient evidence to charge [him] with being a party in a conspiracy to cause explosions in the United Kingdom." The man denied any