Devices from London attacks in Met’s museum of terrorism used to train police

 
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4 December 2013

An exhibition of terrorist bomb paraphernalia is being used to help train police anti-terror investigators from around the world.

Scotland Yard has gathered exhibits from inquiries into attacks on London dating back to the 19th century.

Items include a bomb timer used by the Fenians — the forerunners of the IRA — in attacks in the 1880s, to a street sign showing blast damage from the huge IRA truck bomb at Canary Wharf in 1996.

Airport attack: the mortar launcher used by the IRA to fire shells onto the runway at Heathrow in 1994

One of the original mortar rounds used in the IRA attack on Downing Street in 1991 is also on show. The round was made from a Guinness gas bottle canister taken from an Irish pub. One round exploded in the garden, prompting John Major, who was chairing a cabinet meeting on the Gulf War, famously to remark: “I think we’d better start again somewhere else.”

There are reconstructions of the liquid bombs with which terrorists planned to murder thousands of people on 10 transatlantic aircraft in 2006.

The Evening Standard was given an exclusive tour of the exhibition, now in a room in Scotland Yard. It was assembled by Scotland Yard’s Bomb Data Centre, part of the force’s SO15 Counter Terrorism Command.

The team assembles fragments of bombs and gathers intelligence on explosive devices used in terror attacks in the UK, as well as some used abroad.

Deadly exhibits: the timer and power unit for an IRA bomb planted in Dean Stanley Street in 1973

They range from incendiary devices created by animal rights activists, to items linked to the Angry Brigade, a small anarchist group based in Stoke Newington that was behind a series of bomb attacks between 1970 and 1972.

Police have omitted items from the 7/7 bombings of 2005 out of sensitivity to the families of victims. However, the exhibition includes a reconstruction of one of the rucksack bombs used in the failed 21/7 attacks on the Underground and a bus two weeks later.Commander Richard Walton, chief of SO15, said the exhibits helped show the changing nature of the terror threat faced by the capital: “People these days tend to think Islamic terrorism is all that there has ever been, but these exhibits show that terrorism changes with different eras.

Shoe bomb: a reconstruction of the trainer Richard Reid tried to use to blow up a plane in 2001

“We are currently living through a time of a potent threat from al Qaeda but hopefully it will be defeated.”

Other exhibits include a recording of an IRA phone warning about the Bishopsgate truck bomb in 1993; the handwritten note from a senior Met officer handing control of the Iranian Embassy siege to the SAS; and the launchplate for the IRA mortar attack on Heathrow airport in 1994.

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