The man who blew himself up outside Liverpool Women's Hospital probably acted alone, a senior counter terrorism officer has said.
The bomber, Emad Al Swealmeen, 32, died when his homemade explosive went off in the back of a Delta Taxi on November 14 last year. The device, which was designed by Al Swealmeen at his flat in Rutland Avenue, near Sefton Park, contained around 1,000 ball bearings which shattered the car windscreen.
Dramatic footage later emerged of the explosion which led to a massive response from the emergency services. Counter Terror Police North West took the lead, raiding addresses on Rutland Avenue and Sutcliffe Street.
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Now Matt Jukes , Head of Counter Terrorism Policing and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has said that Al Swealmeen is not thought to have belonged to terrorist cell. He said: "At present we don't have other individuals connected to the attack and it does appear that the individual had the characteristics of someone who was acting alone and was self initiated."
Mr Jukes, who stressed that the investigation was 'ongoing' , also said that the device used by Al Swealmeen was not basic. He said: "It was a relatively sophisticated attempted attack and explosion. It's very likely that individual would have accessed online material."
The ECHO also asked Mr Jukes about reports that the members of the SAS were sent to the city to assist the investigation into the bombing. Mr Jukes said: "I don't want to go into too much detail about our partners in the military. But we will typically deploy counter terror police firearms officers who will look not that different to special forces.
"We did in that case (Liverpool) work closely with the military in relation to explosives and they supported us.
"So we do work closely with military partners but don't talk too much about those partners in detail."
Speaking at a briefing today Mr Jukes said that the main terror threat in the UK was now increasingly linked to 'self-initiating terrorists' who were 'unpredictable.'
He said individuals of this type could move into action 'very quickly.'
Mr Jukes said there were around “800 live investigations running at the moment”, about 80% of which are linked to Islamist extremism and that “remains the predominant ideological threat we face in our work.”
He said that since the start of 2017 there have been 11 Islamist extremist attacks and that 32 late-stage terror plots were foiled in that time. Mr Jukes said that 18 of these were linked to Islamist ideology and 12 related to right-wing extremism.
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