The bombing of a family restaurant in Exeter sent shockwaves around the country. WMN Chief Reporter Andy Greenwood speaks to terrorism expert Bill Tupman about the case, how Nicky Reilly was missed and where the threat might come from next

BRITAIN'S security services were shaken to the core by the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11 2001. The resultant reorganisation has established a counter- terrorism command in London and three regional counter-terrorism unit "hubs" in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire.

The regional network also extends to an office of MI5 in the South West, as well as a police-staffed counter- terrorism intelligence unit in the Westcountry. Then there are the local Special Branch officers and the resources of Devon and Cornwall Police.

Even though the necessary policies had been put in place, the equipment purchased and officers trained, few can have imagined that Exeter would be the next target following attacks on London and Glasgow.

Certainly for Bill Tupman, an expert on terrorism from the University of Exeter, "the story didn't add up".

"On one hand, we are being told that he [the bomber] is educationally challenged, on the other hand he's put together two devices sufficiently sophisticated to hurt himself," he says. "That didn't add up with him being the sort of person that the media was portraying him as.

"The other thing that didn't seem right was Exeter as a target. It didn't fit in with any organised way of looking at the world, there are many places that you would expect to be targets – the Giraffe cafe in Exeter, it just didn't seem likely.

"Why would you have a go at Exeter? There is no good answer to that question."

Within nine hours of the bombing, Devon and Cornwall Police's deputy chief constable had told reporters that Reilly had been "preyed upon, radicalised and taken advantage of", despite "his weak and vulnerable illness".

It was a statement which intrigued Mr Tupman.

"If he had been manipulated by somebody who knew what they were doing, they would have sent him to London, to Heathrow, to Bristol at least," he says. "There are much more obvious targets to send someone to who is regarded as disposable.

"There clearly was a lot of interest in the radicalisation process and it was fashionable at that stage to talk of people who made a terrorist career out of radicalising people, similar to paedophile grooming.

"But the reports that have come out say that there is no such thing as a typical terrorist, there is no typical path of recruitment, and there are individuals being radicalised by interaction with websites just as much as they are being radicalised by individuals."

Questions remain as to how Reilly managed to hide his intentions from the police and other security agencies. While openly converting to Islam, he covertly researched how to construct the devices which could have caused devastation in a family- friendly cafe.

Mr Tupman said there was clearly a "huge amount" of electronic surveillance being undertaken. Reilly, however, may have avoided tripping the system because he didn't set a pattern.

"I think there is so much traffic out there that you don't just get red- flagged for visiting one site," he explained. "You get red-flagged for a succession of visits to a succession of sites – for a pattern of behaviour.

"Somebody like Reilly, given his background, might not follow a pattern. There is an awful lot of recording stuff out there and I suspect after this incident, some of the red flags will have been adjusted.

"There is a lot more going on out there than we realise because we don't actually know what the technology being used is.

"It is a possibility that, post-9/11, we fell into the American trap of relying too much on electronic intelligence and too little on human intelligence."

Current counter-terrorism strategy is based on what are referred to as the "Four Ps" – prevent, pursue, protect and prepare. The pursuit agenda has become plain and resulted in a number of high-profile court cases.

The prevent strategy, now being strengthened by Government, has so far been the "poor relation", according to Mr Tupman.

"That is because there is no career to be made out of it and there is no way of measuring how successful it is," he explains.

"It is like the business of police patrol work – you can't measure how successful it is. If a crime has been prevented, there is no way of measuring that.

"Prevention is the poor relation, as is human intelligence. It is undervalued.

"It is hard work, it involves you putting yourself into the other person's shoes. It involves you learning how to think like they do. It takes a certain sort of person. It has always been easier to respond and react."

He says the question now being posed is why the potential threat of Islamic extremists was not identified a decade ago. Equally, questions are being raised about the possible threats in the next 10 years.

The security services, he argues, would have to have been expanded anyway to counter the resurgence of Russia and China.

But, Mr Tupman added: "We have got to worry now about people coming back from Iraq and Somalia. There are people of British origin in both places.

"We are tending to concentrate on Pakistan and we are used to seeing the threat as being from people who are of Indian sub-continent origin.

"But we may be in danger of a North African wave. Training has also been going on in Iraq and, as people are dispersed, some of them came to the UK. So we may have a more professional threat to deal with."

To date, Mr Tupman feels the response to the current threats has been proportionate, but says "care" is needed not to overstep the mark.

"We have got to watch the human rights angle, because we can lose the whole show if the security services and the terrorists work together to undermine democracy," he concludes. "Then we have all lost.

"Five men and a dog cannot bring down democracy, but they can provoke an overreaction."