Terrorists target the mentally ill as useful

The tactic echoed the unthinkable cruelty of the Iraqi war zone.The target was a crowded family restaurant.

The tactic echoed the unthinkable cruelty of the Iraqi war zone. The target was a crowded family restaurant. And the accused would-be attacker, who was wounded when his bomb went off prematurely in the restaurant bathroom, was a hulking 22-year-old who police say has mental problems.

Police in the southwest England town of Exeter charged Nicky Reilly, a British convert to Islam, with terrorism in the May explosion and alleged that extremists took advantage of his problems to groom him for a suicide mission.

“Our investigation so far indicates Reilly, who had a history of mental illness, had adopted the Islamic faith,” said Tony Melville, a deputy chief constable of the Devon and Cornwall police force. “We believe, despite his weak and vulnerable illness, he was preyed upon, radicalised and taken advantage of.”

Although the explosion in Exeter did not get much international attention, it has raised concerns among Western anti-terror officials because it resembles cases in Iraq in which militants used people with mental problems for suicide bombings.

The case and several other recent developments have put Britain on alert for attacks by lone-wolf militants and converts.

“Here was a man with a borderline IQ and mental problems who was apparently recruited by extremists,” said a senior British anti-terror official, who asked to remain anonymous because of restrictions on discussing investigations. “It’s a method that we are aware of in Iraq. This shows we have to expand our attention to new areas where radicalisation can take place. Not just prisons or schools, but mental institutions and the mentally ill.”

Every year since 2003, usually during the summer vacation season, extremists have tried to strike Britain. They succeeded July 7, 2005, when a group of Britons of Pakistani descent killed 52 people in suicide bombings on subway trains and a bus. There have been several close calls, including a failed attack in July 2007 in which suspects tried to explode two car-bombs in a London nightclub district, then rammed a flaming, explosives-packed car into a terminal at the Glasgow airport.

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This year, the threat seems to have taken on a new face. Radicals have popped up in unexpected places with diverse backgrounds. Unlike previous cases, they do not appear to have strong links to international networks such as al-Qaeda.

In April, police arrested a 19-year-old student living with his family in an affluent suburb of Bristol and confiscated explosives in his fortified top-floor apartment. The suspect, Andrew Ibrahim, is the son of an Egyptian-born pathologist and a British mother and attended an expensive private school. Authorities said Ibrahim had been a devotee of hip-hop music, worn face piercings and wrestled with drug addiction before developing an intense interest in fundamentalist Islam.

Police began investigating Ibrahim thanks to a tip from an imam who suspected that Ibrahim had been handling explosives, anti-terror officials said. The imam noticed that Ibrahim had burn marks on his hands and reported him to police, officials said.

The investigation has not turned up other suspects, officials said. In contrast, investigators believe Reilly, the suspect in the Exeter explosion, was radicalised and manipulated by extremists. The case is disturbing, officials said, because of Reilly’s vulnerability. They described him as a withdrawn youth from a troubled working-class home who developed mental problems in adolescence.

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A few years ago, Reilly converted to Islam and adopted the name Mohamed Rasheed. He attended several mosques around his home in Plymouth, about 50 miles from Exeter, and hung out with a predominantly Kurdish and Turkish group of men at a fish-and-chips shop near the apartment where he lived with his mother.

Police have not revealed details about the process by which he was allegedly recruited and radicalised. But May 22, he rode a bus to Exeter carrying three crude explosive devices described as nail bombs capable of causing a fireball-type explosion. He entered the Giraffe restaurant, which is popular with families, around lunchtime and went into a bathroom in back.

One of the bombs went off prematurely as Reilly was allegedly handling it, inflicting severe burns and cuts on him, authorities said. Footage from security cameras showed him staggering out of the restaurant, his face and shirt bloody, as patrons fled in panic. Investigators say the bombs could have caused casualties if they had been set off properly.

Anti-terror officials say it is another sign that extremism in Britain has spread among an increasingly young and diverse population.