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Victim : A Function of Distance and Attraction

In this model the victim doesn't exist in his or her own right. The victim is an abstraction, a projection of the worldview adopted by Ahmed, with support from his group and guidance from his leader.

Distance from Victim
The issue of distance between Ahmed and his victim can be understood as a kind of mathematical formula where, as the physical distance between killer and victim decreases, the emotional distance must increase in order for killing to occur. Physical distance, as Grossman describes it, can be provided not only by space, such as a bomber who sets his bomb off with a cell phone from a safe distance, but also by technology, such as the use of a backpack bomb which the jihadi has only to detonate, or by the use of a gun instead of a knife. These are not issues that concern us on the Internet. Online, the distance that is created is emotional. Cultural, moral, social, and ethnic differences are all emphasized on jihadi websites, and the jihadis have a very long list of people whose lives are forfeit: impious Sunni Muslims, Shiites and Sufis, Christians and Jews, Pagans, and so on.

Attractiveness of victim
The victim's attractiveness to the killer is in large part a function of their relevance, which in turn is a product of the emotional distance created in jihadi discourse. The likelihood of success is an assessment that Ahmed will have to make with his group, based on whatever training and experience they may have acquired either online or preferably (for them) at a training camp. This assessment does not have to be realistic to have the necessary affect. Closely linked to their assessment of the likelihood of success is their measure of the enemy's loss. It matters only that they believe the enemy suffers a loss. What Ahmed gains from killing will range from the satisfaction of striking terror into the hearts of his enemies, to the rewards of Paradise in the event that his attack is suicidal in nature. A great deal of effort is made by jihadis online to honor the memory of the martyrs and instill in the living a desire to follow the same course of action.

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Conclusion
This essay is much more of a beginning than an end. It is an attempt to explore the applicability of Grossman's model to my studies of jihadi activity online. As with any model, it is a tool to assist in understanding the data, rather than a 1:1 map of a particular landscape. As such it seems to have much to offer, both in terms of online activity in support of global jihad and the limits of same.

The Big Picture

click to view full size

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[13] This part of Grossman's model is derived from his reading of Shalit, B., 1988, The Psychology of Conflict and Combat.

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Four factors make up the killer's, in this case Ahmed's, predisposition in Grossman's model.

Training
Training is perhaps the use of the Internet by jihadis that has received the most – though not the most accurate – coverage in the media. The efficacy of such training is hotly debated. Some aspects of jihadi learning can be taught online, such as ideological or religious indoctrination. Others, most notably terrorist tradecraft (e.g. the operation of firearms or making of explosive devices) are highly problematic to learn from a distance and from a book.

Experience
Given that terrorists cannot kill people without stepping away from their computer and getting out into the real world, at first glance experience would seem to be something that Ahmed cannot hope to acquire on the Internet. It is worth noting, in this regard, that there are certain activities that Ahmed can engage in, and engage in successfully, that will support the jihad in a meaningful way. These activities, often called e-Jihad, are not nearly as serious as the actual taking of human life, but represent a kind of "starter terrorism" which may well embolden Ahmed and maintain his morale while he seeks out the real world associations and opportunities that will allow him to kill, and die a martyrs death. Such activities include, but are not limited to, attacks on the websites of perceived enemies of Islam, distribution of videos and other files that promote jihad, and more ordinary cyber crime such as credit card fraud and software piracy. The nature of criminal justice systems being what it is – namely slow – Ahmed will likely succeed in these endeavors, or at least be led to believe that he has succeeded due to the lack of a swift response from the police.

Conditioning
When Grossman speaks of conditioning he is referring mostly to the deliberate application of classical and operant conditioning, and also to the affects of social learning processes, in efforts to increase the lethality of soldiers in combat between World War 2 and the Vietnam War. He then segues into a discussion of how these same processes are at work in American society today, with a particularly negative affect on young people. Here he also leans on the decades of research that demonstrate some sort of positive correlation between exposure to violence, particularly media violence, and subsequent aggressive or violent behavior.[11] While this is another subject that lies beyond the scope of this essay, suffice it to say that vivid portrayals of violence, up to and including the actual murder of hostages, are a frequently offered up for download and viewing on jihadi websites.[12] It is beyond doubt that such portrayals help to desensitize Ahmed and those like him to the violence they fervently hope to perpetrate.

Temperament
Grossman's work is based on the assumption that all but 2% (the "natural born killers," psychopaths, sociopaths) of soldiers have a powerful disinclination to kill. In terrorism studies, the consensus view is represented by Sageman's Understanding Terror Networks, where he tried and failed to find signs of clinical mental illness in the hundreds of first generation al-Qaeda members he studied. Jihadis, aside from their choosing to involve themselves in terrorist activity, seem to be relatively normal individuals. One caveat to this: as jihadis are increasingly self-selecting and self-organizing (i.e. homegrown) it may be that unstable individuals are more likely to succeed in involving themselves in terrorist activity than they would have been in an age where to be a part of al-Qaida meant getting to a training camp – where such people may have been rejected by the organization. To the extent that groups of jihadis form online, signs of obvious instability in members of the group may be missed, and by the time the group transitions to real world activity, such members may be too deeply embedded in the group to get rid of.

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[10] Spencer Dryden, drummer of the Jefferson Airplane, from the song A small package of value will come to you shortly, on the album After Bathing at Baxter's.

[11] List of references from my unpublished 2008 paper Video portrayals of violence on jihadi websites is available on request.

[12] 5 % of all discussions on jihadi websites exist for the sole purpose of distributing videos depicting explicit acts of terrorist violence, and such videos account for over half of all jihadi videos in circulation. This finding was subsequently duplicated in a study I did of jihadi videos distributed via YouTube. Regarding the latter, see: The Global Jihad on YouTube.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

As with authority, there are characteristics of the group and of Ahmed's relationship to it that will affect his willingness to kill.

Group factors are presented by Grossman under the rubric of Group Absolution, which in my application of his model to jihadis on the Internet I have renamed Diffusion of Responsibility.[6]

Intensity of support for killing
As with authority, the group may express support for Ahmed in his mission to kill the infidels, but so long as that group continues to exist solely on the Internet such support will always have its limits. While Zawahiri is well known to government agencies, and thus has little to lose by publicly expressing his desire for Ahmed to kill, the same may not be the case for members of Ahmed's virtual group. Their expressions in this regard will by definition be made over telecommunications channels, channels that are undoubtedly under some degree of surveillance. This is doubly so if they express their support for killing in some more public venue, such as a jihadi forum, or in comments on a blog.

Legitimacy of the group
Groups of soldiers – the primary focus of Grossman's work – are constituted by legitimate government authorities, thus legitimacy is inherent in such groups. A jihadist group, regardless of whether it exists in cyberspace or not, has no such legitimacy. The group must justify its existence not once but perpetually, or risk its status diminishing - something which, were it to occur, might not only reduce Ahmed's willingness to kill, but also increase the willingness of Ahmed or other group members to leave the group or even turn against it.

Size of group
It is interesting to note how a process (diffusion of responsibility) that is commonly associated in the literature with inaction - for example, the failure of bystanders to intervene - can also be associated with the worst kind of action. Either way the diffusion affect creates a form of anonymity behind which men may hide. It seems logical that in this regard the larger the group, the more responsibility for any action undertaken by Ahmed is diffused among the other group members. Ahmed says "I only did it because my group was right there with me, supporting me all the way," and the other group members are free to say "I didn't actually kill anyone, it was Ahmed who did it."[7] Of course, in order to do any killing the distance between group members will have to be closed.

Proximity of the group
The group being a thing far away, existing in the clouds of cyberspace, it will have to either accept the limits on communication and action that such distance imposes, or the distance will have to be closed by members who dare to travel to meet with others. Such travel can involve a degree of risk under the best of circumstances, and the risk only increases with the distance that must be travelled and the number of borders – if any – which must be crossed. In the post-9/11 period we have seen a number of groups that formed wholly or partly online, and then progressed to face-to-face meetings in order to facilitate planning and execution of terrorist attacks.[8] Fortunately, a combination of online surveillance, border controls, and international cooperation prevented such efforts from bearing fruit.

Identification with group
While the Internet presents a challenge for the global jihad when it comes to issues of legitimacy and proximity, it is perhaps uniquely suited to facilitating the development and expression of group and individual identity. A thorough discussion of why that may be is beyond the scope of this essay, but it seems that issues related to computer-mediated communications and the feeling of presence that such an experience engenders has much to do with it.[9] Duration is likely to play a part in this as well.

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[5] Psalm 133

[6] Grossman notes that his group absolution is basically synonymous with diffusion of responsibility, and I prefer the latter as it ties into an existing body of social science research.

[7] I am trying very hard to avoid getting into a discussion of Granovetter's Strength of Weak Ties theory (1973, revisited in 1983) but for future consideration, group size and group strength are likely to be important and interdependent variables. Assessing group strength on the basis of the ties that bind group members is likely to be the most problematic issue, as it will depend on how one defines the core concept of strength. In accordance with the theory, weak ties have important strengths, and strong ties have certain weaknesses.

[8] The best documented of such cases include those of Aabid Khan and his associates, and the Irhabi007 network. See Anatomy of a Modern Homegrown Terror Cell: Aabid Khan et al., http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefaaabidkhan0908.pdf

[9] See for example Nicovich, S.G., Boller, G.W., & Cornwell, T.B. (2006). Experienced Presence within Computer-Mediated Communications: Initial Explorations on the Effects of Gender with Respect to Empathy and Immersion. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(2).

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

If you study jihadis on the Internet for any length of time, you come to realize that there are many more people who self-identify with the global jihad than there are people participating in terrorist activity.[2] In other words, if the jihadi web - the system of interlinked static sites, libraries of documents, forums, blogs, YouTube sites, virtual worlds, etc. - are a sort of factory, into one end of which march aspiring terrorists, and out the other end come active terrorists, then clearly the production process is a highly inefficient one, at least outside of conflict zones such as Afghanistan or Somalia.

I have previously examined this issue using concepts borrowed from criminology, proposing that to achieve his ambition the would-be mujahid requires three things: motivation, association, and opportunity. On the Internet these things are present to varying degrees, and in the real world they are not necessarily more readily available. The business of terrorism being killing, there is another way to look at this issue. If the motivation is sufficient, the methods by which one person can kill another person - for whatever reason - are virtually limitless. So when we study killing, we're really studying the factors that either inhibit or encourage the behavior, and that brings us to On Killing, by LTC Dave Grossman.

Grossman identifies four elements that interact with each other in various ways in order to encourage or discourage killing behavior, and his work is based on the premise that the human being has a deeply-rooted disinclination to kill members of his own species. These four elements are:

1. Authority
2. Group
3. Killer
4. Victim

My intent is to discus these four elements as they present themselves in jihadi cyberspace, and with an emphasis on those areas where we might focus our efforts in order to discourage our prototypical jihadi "Ahmed" from killing.

Authority[3]

For the purpose of this discussion we will personify Authority in the form of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second in command, who has over the last few years put a great deal of effort into issuing regular communiqués to his followers.[4] Grossman defines the role of authority in killing in terms of the demands the authority makes upon the killer, in this case Ahmed, and the relationship that exists between the authority and the killer.

Intensity of demands
This is one area where the Internet does not work against Zawahiri, and in many ways may help him. His demands that his followers kill can be as intense as he is capable of making them, and since they must be recorded and then delivered after-the-fact, he can carefully rehearse each message and embellish it in ways that might maximize the impact that it has on Ahmed and others like him. And once his message is released, Zawahiri can count on even his most dedicated adversaries to go to great lengths to ensure the message is distributed far and wide, both in its digital form and in transcription.

Legitimacy of authority
Dave Grossman is a Lt. Colonel (US Army, Retired). There is no debating that, and when he was on active duty, that rank conferred on him legitimacy. Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the other hand, can call himself a Sheikh, but no one is obliged to accept that title. Legitimacy is something Zawahiri has to fight for with every breath he takes, and any error on his part - real or perceived - has the potential to undermine his legitimacy. Thus, unlike a legitimate military commander, Zawahiri's authority is in some measure a product of his relationship with his followers. They can accept him as their Sheikh, or not.

Respect for Authority
There are many things that can effect how much respect Ahmed has for Zawahiri's authority, and much of this is beyond Zawahiri's control. As with legitimacy, Ahmed can respect Zawahiri to whatever extent he wishes, and any misstep on the latter's part can have a long-lasting negative impact on his already limited ability to command forces in battle.

Proximity of Authority
The challenges Zawahiri faces in getting Ahmed to kill, regarding intensity of demands, legitimacy of authority, and respect for authority, are all compounded by his lack of proximity. The President of the United States, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, can travel far and wide to spend time with the troops he has deployed to combat al-Qaida. Zawahiri cannot do anything similar. No matter how intensely he expresses his demand for Ahmed to kill, that demand will be weak in comparison to a similar demand made by a commander standing beside his troops. Zawahiri can present himself in a video dressed in the garb of a Sheikh, surrounded by copies of the Quran and Hadith, not to mention AK-47s, but the image will never be as effective at conferring legitimacy as actually seeing Zawahiri in the flesh, where the deferential behavior of other followers might reinforce Ahmed's own impression of the man. That last point brings us to the next factor, the group.

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[1] Grossman uses the phrase "Why Johnny Can't Kill" in his book, and this use of the common Arabic name Ahmed is used in the same sense, to personify an otherwise generic character.

[2] For example, I recently examined the front pages of each of the ten discussion forums currently in use by supporters of al-Qaida and the global jihad. Each such page displays the number of members each community has – the current total is about 45,000.

[3] Grossman's modeling of the affect of authority and group on killing are based largely upon Milgram's (1963) Behavioral Study of Obedience.

[4] See the collection here, for example: http://www.nefafoundation.org/documents-aqstatements.html

by A. Aaron Weisburd

The Exeter bombing
Successful counter-terrorism can be described as a non-event. When we are successful in identifying people who are intent on committing terrorism, and manage to somehow intervene to prevent them from doing so, nothing happens. When we fail to identify and focus our efforts on the right people, however, bad things happen.

The Big Friendly Terrorist
Called "the Big Friendly Giant"[1] by neighbors prior to his conversion to Islam, Nicky Reilly recently pled guilty to charges[2] stemming from his attempted bombing in Exeter, England, on 22nd May, 2008. Nicky Reilly matters precisely because upon superficial examination his case is so atypical. Conventional wisdom would argue that we should dismiss him. A giant of a man with - according to his mother - the mind of a child, Nicky Reilly has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome[3], depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder[4]. Viewed as mentally disabled, Nicky Reilly was in fact dismissed as a threat when he turned up on the periphery of an MI5 investigation.[5]

There is no profile
There is something close to consensus in counter-terrorism circles that there is no profile for jihadi terrorists, and perhaps not for terrorists of any sort. In fact, what stands out when people attempt to study terrorists is that, aside from having been involved in terrorist-related activity, they are ordinary, average guys. To cite just one of the many studies that have arrived at this conclusion:

The majority of the individuals involved in these plots began as “unremarkable” - they had “ordinary” jobs, had lived “ordinary” lives and had little, if any criminal history.[6]

Nevertheless we must constantly make decisions regarding who is the greater threat, and who the lesser threat. Those decisions are made on the basis of something - call them "guidelines" or "standards" if the word "profile" offends. Herein lies the problem. We study terrorists as individuals - rather than as participants in a process - and we focus on their attributes or characteristics instead of their behaviors and relationships.

Differential Jihadization
In order that we might better be able to assess who might constitute the greater threat, and thus require attention on our part, I have developed the theory of differential jihadization[7]. The theory is an attempt to explain why some people succeed in becoming terrorists while others fail. I arrived at the theory as a way of reconciling my observation of tens of thousands of individuals active on jihadist websites over the last six years with the comparatively low rate of terrorist attacks during the same period.

To become a terrorist one must need something that the Internet either does not provide or is not very effective at providing. The theory of differential jihadization is derived from criminological discussion of a similar issue: the fact that some people, some of the time, get involved in criminal activity while many others do not, when all other factors (e.g. poverty, or discrimination) are experienced equally. Opportunities and associations that might facilitate involvement in crime are not equally available to all - that is the differential. This is not to say that an individual who is truly hell-bent on becoming involved in crime cannot succeed in doing so, only that they will be less likely to succeed, and that they will have to try harder to do so.

When it comes to the aspiring terrorist, I contend that three things are necessary: motivation, association, and opportunity. The theory does not stipulate that these things be found on, let alone exclusively on, the Internet. In fact, when first conceived, my assumption was that the missing conditions were *not* to be found online. Only after being confronted with hard data have I come to admit that yes, in some cases, the Internet can significantly contribute to and/or enable people becoming involved in terrorism[8], as was clearly the case with Aabid Khan[9], Younis Tsouli[10], and their many associates.

Motivation
Motivation can be viewed as a state of being. The radicalized Muslim youth views his world as one where the armies of Zionist Christendom are seeking to destroy Islam, and so he should involve himself in terrorist activity in defense of the Ummah and Muslim lands. Motivation can also be viewed as a process, a fire that requires constant tending and stoking. The behaviors of searching for, collecting, sharing, and expressing outraged response to "the real news" of The West's War on Islam™ can all be observed in potential terrorists, in some more than others. The aspiring jihadi needs a constant supply of news and information that fits his view of the world and keeps the fire of his anger burning brightly. Can he find this fuel on the Internet? Sure. And he can find it in abundance on jihadi websites. But he can also find it on al-Jazeera, the BBC and CNN. In recognition of the importance of this behavior, al-Qaida for a number of years operated a website called "World News Network", a site which served primarily as a clearinghouse for open source news and information.

Association
Sutherland's Differential Association theory[11] stipulates that criminal behavior is learned in interaction with others within intimate personal groups. And so it is with terrorism. Real world associations are likely to be of more assistance to the aspiring jihadi than those found in cyberspace, yet there is be no doubt that individuals can come together on the Internet to learn terrorist tradecraft. Certain aspects of that tradecraft, e.g. the manufacture of explosives, may be particularly problematic to learn online. In addition to uncertainty regarding the qualifications of the teacher and the self-discipline of the student, there are additional complications related to the third pillar of this theory - opportunity - which will be addressed in a moment. Nevertheless it has happened, and it will likely continue to happen, that some people find the associations they need and acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to be functional terrorists, at least in part and sometimes in whole, on the Internet.[12]

Opportunity
Opportunity is a function of time and place, is frequently a by-product of association, and is not equally available to all. Returning to criminological theory, Cloward and Ohlin built upon the work of Sutherland and addressed this issue as follows:

What we are asserting is that access to illegitimate roles is not freely available to all, as is commonly asserted. Only those neighborhoods in which crime flourishes as a stable, indigenous institution are fertile criminal learning environments for the young. Because these environments afford integration of different age-levels of offender, selected young people are exposed to “differential association” through which tutelage is provided and criminal values and skills are acquired.[13]

With one notable exception, the opportunity to engage in terrorist-related activity will be found in the real world, not online. To understand why this is so, consider the problem of making explosives. Such an effort, if it is to produce reliable results, requires not only good instructions and the necessary ingredients, but also a place to safely assemble the explosives and to test the component parts. The exception is what we have come to call eJihad - terrorist-related activity which is not only organized online but also perpetrated online.[14] Such activity includes but is not limited to: attacking enemy websites; operating jihadi websites; distributing, uploading, and/or producing propaganda; distributing pirating software; and stealing credit cards and identities. Involvement in eJihad is likely both to enable involvement in more serious terrorism-related acts and to embolden the new recruit - the latter because he is likely to think that he has gotten away with something, at least in the short term.

Having another look at Nicky Reilly
As noted earlier, Nicky Reilly fell in with a group of guys who were already under investigation by Special Branch. In fact, shortly after the bombing in Exeter, two of Reilly's associates in Plymouth were taken into custody at gun point.[15] However, neither was charged with any crime related to Nicky's jihad, suggesting that they did not directly contribute to the planning and preparation of the attack (i.e. provide the necessary association and opportunity). Nevertheless, these real world associations may have contributed to Nicky's motivation - we simply don't know.

Somehow, somewhere, someway, Nicky came to identify with the global jihad, and to view himself as one of the mujahedin. We know from accounts of friends and family, as well as from testimony in court, that Nicky spent a considerable amount of time online, immersing himself in radical content. The account of a former boyfriend of Reilly's mother is telling:

"He was fascinated by the attack on the Twin Towers as he saw England and America as satanic.

"He would watch beheadings on the internet and believed in honour killing. It was deeply disturbing.

"Nicky discussed with me the concept of martyrdom and paradise, where 40 virgins would be waiting for him. I told him he was on a sticky wicket with his beliefs but he was utterly caught up in it."[16]

The more we look at Nicky's behaviors rather than his attributes, the more he sounds like so many other young men who have been caught up in Islamist terrorism. Consider how often we have heard comments such as these:

Neighbours recall him regularly using a local internet cafe. 'He used to come in quite often,' said one visitor to the cafe.[17]

and

“Nicky used to sit in his room all the time on the computer. He had a webcam and would be taking part in these internet prayer meetings and speaking to the others in their language.”[18]

In the case of Nicky Reilly, it was in fact on the Internet that he found both association and opportunity, on a "website" he created for himself called chechen233, on YouTube[19]:

click image to view full size

Using the messaging functions offered by YouTube, Reilly came to associate with two men said to be based in Pakistan, who helped him choose a target for his attack and pointed him towards bomb-making instructions.[20]

I think we do Nicky a great disservice when we speak of his being "brainwashed." While I don't see the world in the same way that he and his cohorts do, neither do I believe that their view of things is the product of some sort of weakness or abnormality. I can also see how Nicky's linear thinking may have actually contributed to his ability to make a more or less functional explosive device, and it is likely that computer mediated communications made it easier for him to relate to others, in addition to preventing others from observing him in such a way that they might have chosen to shun him. The comments of a doctor who treated Reilly address these points:

"He showed linear thinking and had special needs but he was not stupid.

"He just had trouble interacting. Nicky looked at the world in a different way to other people and he was very vulnerable."[21]

In Conclusion
We need to keep in mind that terrorism is an activity which only a very small number of people engage in, and the number of those who we are able to study in any detail is smaller still. Consequently, generalizing from any particular sample of terrorists to the entire population of terrorists will always be somewhat problematic. We need to assess potential terrorists in terms of their behaviors, their associations, and the opportunities that are available to them, rather than on their attributes and characteristics. Examining the online activities of the aspiring jihadist facilitates such a shift in focus, because by definition a person we observe in cyberspace is dissociated from their more worldly aspects.

+++ Notes +++

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/15/uksecurity1

[2] http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/uk/Muslim-convert-admits-failed-suicide.4594760.jp

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2075559/Exeter-bomb-blast-Muslim-convert-Nicky-Reilly-in-court.html

[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2017366/Exeter-explosionNeighbours-tell-of-Nicky-Reillyandrsquos-troubled-past.html

[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/25/uksecurity.terrorism

[6] http://hoekstra.house.gov/UploadedFiles/NYPD_Report-Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf

[7] http://www.iletsbei.com/lee_forum/articledetail.php?recordID=1073

[8] http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/006390.html

[9] http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefaaabidkhan0908.pdf

[10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7knxgWSEgr8

[11] Sutherland, E.H. (2004). Differential Association. In J.E. Jacoby (Ed.), Classics of Criminology (pp. 272-273). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

[12] http://www.sofir.org/sarchives/006276.php

[13] Cloward, R. A., & Ohlin, L. E. (2004). Delinquency and opportunity. In J. E. Jacoby (Ed.), Classics of criminology (p. 284). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

[14] http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/006390.html

[15] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3994866.ece

[16] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3201863/Exeter-terror-bomber-Nicky-Reilly-was-known-as-Big-Friendly-Giant.html

[17] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/25/uksecurity.terrorism

[18] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2017366/Exeter-explosionNeighbours-tell-of-Nicky-Reillyandrsquos-troubled-past.htm

[19] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4951616.ece

[20] ibid.

[21] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3201863/Exeter-terror-bomber-Nicky-Reilly-was-known-as-Big-Friendly-Giant.html