Revealed: Simple plans for a bomb to wreak carnage are still online
TERROR manuals detailing how to build a ‘fairy light’ bomb were easily available via Google last night.
The vile ‘ how to’ guides were readily accessible despite repeated calls for the internet giant to remove links to the sites.
Fanatics set out step-by-step guides of how to build a bomb similar to the device used on the Tube yesterday, using fairy lights as a crude detonator.
Theresa May – who said ‘enough is enough’ after the London Bridge atrocity – will put fresh pressure on Google, Facebook and Microsoft next week, when she and French President Emmanuel Macron host an anti- extremism summit with the internet giants in New York.
Daily Mail journalists were able to find the manuals online within seconds – despite repeated warnings that they have been used to commit terror outrages, and counter-terrorism chiefs saying it is ‘critical’ that would-be terrorists are blocked from accessing them.
The manuals detailed how to use basic household items to make ‘an effective bomb that causes damage to the enemy’ and said followers could use the devices to ‘kill tens of people’. Last night, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg called for Google to be held criminally liable.
He said: ‘Google has amazing software that makes it possible to search for anything. This has made the company billions of pounds; it is shameful that it will not use its technology to root out sites that help evil-doers. I would like to see the company made criminally liable for the result of any terrorist act that it can be shown to have abetted. It must do more to help prevent terror.’
Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year- old son David was killed in the July 7 Tube bombings in 2005, also called on Google to do more to tackle such material.
‘Google has a social and corporate responsibility to work to block these kind of manuals,’ he said. ‘In the last two years we have seen an acceleration of attacks, but there has not been an acceleration in the strategy to prevent them.
‘These sites need to be removed but the Government has backed down from taking action. It has backed down on firms like Google and it has backed down in the face of civil liberty campaigners who said police should not have the power to watch these sites.’
In the hours after the Tube attack in Parsons Green, West London, the Mail used Google searches to find terror guides to building bombs. One guide – published in 2010 and still available online – was authored by a fanatic calling themselves the ‘Al Qaeda chef’. The author wrote: ‘We are conveying to you our military training right into your kitchen to relieve you of the difficulty of travelling to us.
‘All you have to do is enter your kitchen and make an explosive device that would damage the enemy if you put your trust in Allah and then use this explosive device properly.’ The site boasted that all the bomb comand ponents were readily available andd couldld bbe bought withoutith t arousing suspicion.
Its step-by- step instructions detailed how to use a string of fairy lights as a detonator and hhow to rigi an alarm clock as a timer. Photographs of the Parsons Green device appear to show fairy lights protruding from the bomb it is understood to have been equipped with a timer. In another guide, published last year, an anonymous author offered advice on how to camouflage a bomb so it did not arouse suspicion, by placing it inside a container or bag. The Parsons Green device was hidden in a Lidl carrier bag.
The article advised would-be terrorists to target ‘large crowds’ to inflict maximum damage and to strike at ‘the most crowded time of the day’. Yesterday’s attack targeted commuters in the morning rush-hour.
Downing Street has repeatedly called for internet firms to do more to remove extremist material.
In May, a former nightclub doorman was found to have built an explosive device in his bedroom after researching techniques online. Islamic State supporter Zahid Hussain, 29, from Birmingham, tried to make a series of devices, including a nail bomb, using Christmas tree lights and researched railway lines as potential targets.
Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi reportedly learnt how to construct his bomb via YouTube videos.
Simon Kempton, counterterrorism lead for the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: ‘The responsibility is on the internet providers, the hosts, to take down this material if it is clearly a threat to public safety. This type of thing should not be searchable.
‘This is critical for the prevention of terrorism.’
Downing Street last night said it was ‘ plainly not acceptable’ if a sevenyearold terror manual was still readily available online. But sources insisted Mrs May and Home Secretary Amber Rudd were putting intense pressure on the technology firms to take the issue seriously.
‘We have repeatedly told them they have got to do better,’ a source said. ‘There is more to do and we expect them to do it.
‘We are working hard with them and they are facing significant pressure to take things down quicker, but there is more to do.’
A Google spokesman said last night: ‘We remove links to illegal content from our search results as soon as we’re notified of them.
‘We are committed to working in partnership with governments to tackle these challenging and complex problems.’
‘It is shameful they won’t use their technology’ ‘They have got to do better’