Online: What began as a scientific experiment in 1969 has become the perfect dissemination and communication tool for terrorists.
Online
What began as a scientific experiment in 1969 has become the perfect dissemination and communication tool for terrorists.
The worldwide web means al Qaeda - through computer hacking, encrypted e-mails and locked-down websites - can reach and preach to anyone anywhere in the world. Access to the internet means the training camps of Pakistan can be accessed by those who know where and how to look.
When police arrested Mohammed Atif Siddique on April 13, 2006, eight days after seizing his laptop at Glasgow Airport and after months of covert surveillance, they found a lengthy trail of electronic evidence detailing his terrorist involvement which led to one of the biggest Scottish police operations of its kind, Operation Niche.
Among the thousands of computer files, mobile phones and Sim cards retrieved from his Alva home were detailed training manuals explaining how to plan and execute terrorist operations, and treatises in Arabic giving the ideological justification for "martyrdom".
There were articles written by Shaykh Yousef al Ayiri, the Saudi scholar and commander of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, who was killed by police in 2003. Yousef is credited with engineering al Qaeda's shift to cyber-terrorism and is the author of hundreds of articles justifying suicide bombings.
They also recovered a training document known as the al Battar manual. In 2005, the document was translated from Arabic. It details how small terror groups should go about targeting, kidnapping and executing hostages and is thought to have been used by extremists who plotted earlier this year to kidnap and murder a British Muslim soldier who had served in Iraq.
Other incriminating evidence included an internet publication called Sawt al Jihad - the voice of Jihad - which, until its demise two years ago, was regarded as the most comprehensive source for aspiring jihadis to learn bomb-making and assassination techniques.
While security officers constantly monitor the web and shut down sites such as Sawt al Jihad, the sheer scale and pace of the internet means it is an almost impossible place to police.
Evan Kohlmann, the author and US expert on al Qaeda and the web, says sites removed are invariably recreated elsewhere within a matter of hours.
It is well documented that the September 11, 2001, suicide bombers used coded e-mails to communicate their complex arrangements and that the suicide bombers behind the attacks on the London transport system on July 7, 2005, underwent much of their training and radicalisation via Islamicist websites.
While his defence team has portrayed Siddique as no more than a bored teenager with an "unhealthy" interest in al Qaeda, detailed forensic analysis by computer experts pieced together a picture of more detailed involvement.
The computer files were not, police asserted, merely grotesque examples of beheadings and other jihadi films. They were evidence of a much deeper, more thorough submersion in terrorist ideology. From the assembled materials, aspiring jihadis could learn how to assemble assault rifles, make bombs, and carry out surveillance operations.
Much of the seized material was in Arabic, Punjabi and Urdu. Twelve translators produced an English version that could be agreed by Sunni and Shi'ite scholars.
The investigation team, known as Operation Niche, grew to 80 officers drawn from Central Scotland, Strathclyde, Fife and Lothian and Borders Police, as well as members of the security services and National Crime Unit, part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
