The Limitations Of Suicide Bombing

Substandard recruits:

A British Muslim convert with a mental age of ten was unable to blow up a restaurant because he'd locked himself in a toilet.

Nicky Reilly, 22, had gone into the cubicle of an Exeter eaterie to assemble the nailbombs from chemicals in bottles. He then planned to rush among the 50 diners - many of them children - and detonate the devices.

However, he found he couldn't unfasten the lock and then one of the bombs exploded, setting the others he was holding off.

Reilly, who was groomed over the internet by extremists into becoming a suicide bomber, was arrested when he staggered outside with serious facial injuries.

...Prosecutor Stuart Baker said: 'He was unable to open the lock of the cubicle door and come out, by which time the first device had already exploded.'

Anti-terror investigators believe Pakistani radicals targeted Reilly because of his history of mental illness.

A plot was hatched involving the Giraffe restaurant in Exeter, where 50 diners, many with their children, were enjoying the half-term break on May 22 this year.
Yesterday, Reilly, who has changed his name to Mohammad Abdul-Aziz Rashid Saeed-Alim, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to preparing a terrorist attack and attempted murder.

...Officers are still trying to trace the extremist cell that successfully targeted him via his YouTube page – on which he called himself Chechen233.

The case is a chilling echo of terrorist methods in Iraq, where the disabled have been persuaded to blow themselves up.

...'There was some debate, which is revealed by comments on the computer,
about what sort of person should be targeted in due course, whether public servants such as police officers or other public servants or ordinary citizens.

‘In the end the decision was made to target ordinary citizens in a restaurant.’

...Incredibly, Reilly’s YouTube page was still online yesterday. It included clips of the September 11 attacks and a video entitled‘How to make a benzine bomb’.