Update on the Banff bomb alert

A suspect has now been charged in relation to the bomb alert in the NE Scotland town of Banff earlier in the week. Connor Ward, who is reported as being 19 years of age, has been charged at Peterhead Sherriff Court under the Explosive Substances Act

Apparently someone saw what they thought was bomb making materials in the back of a car outside Mr. Ward's residence in Banff and alerted the local police. The local gossip is that Mr. Ward's father had come up to live in the area, and promptly stole Mr. Ward's girlfriend away from him. Naturally this did not go over very well. This would be the "local feud" which was reported in the national press earlier in the week.

 Photos circulating in the press earlier in the week showed that Mr. Ward had an English flag mounted inside the front door of his home, but the facts coming out now make that fact quite irrelevant as to the motives of any criminal offences that may have taken place.

There is still the question of how anyone could find out what materials were necessary, where to obtain such materials, or how to use them. I suppose it is theoretically possible to obtain that kind of information online although I'd like to think that the software engineers at Google and Bing would not allow such information to even be eligible for inclusion in their search algorithms. Alternatively, the suspect may have had personal contacts of some sort. Certainly the police have still had a car parked outside Mr. Ward's address, and it's not clear why they would do that if they believe that the suspect was acting alone. Maybe they're worried about a "backlash" although there are no Muslims living in Banff that I know of, so that's not going to happen.

Maybe it's just nice and handy for them nipping across the road to Tescos for their sandwiches at flycup time.

Sources: Scotsman, STV, BBC

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