http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukresponse/story/0,11017,588838,00.html
Threat to avenge animal rights 'martyr'

Barry Horne's death highlights Britain's security problems, writes former Scotland Yard detective Charles Shoebridge

Tuesday November 6, 2001

Barry Horne's death on hunger strike yesterday could hardly have come at a worse time for the police and security services.

Under pressure from the demands of monitoring Islamic extremists in the wake of September 11, Friday's bomb in Birmingham had already shattered any hopes of these commitments being met by a relaxation of operations elsewhere.

Now, with one of the animal rights movement's best known figures having finally achieved "martyrdom", a new and highly unpredictable element enters the terror equation. Claims have been made that, as a consequence of
Horne's death, extremists will target 10 scientists or other 'animal abusers'.

Mindful of their past performance and current abilities, police will need to take these threats seriously.
Horne himself was a major burden on police budgets and manpower throughout the mid 1990s, when activists attacked almost any type of premises concerned with the perceived abuse of animals. These ranged from the burning of meat trucks, to the smashing of shop windows displaying, for
example, posters advertising circuses.

During this period police estimated that, excluding the City of London and Manchester bombs, the total cost of criminal damage carried out by animal rights supporters far exceeded that committed by the IRA.

Following his identification as a suspect for the burning down of a shopping centre on the Isle of Wight in 1994, Horne became the subject of one of the most intensive surveillance operations ever carried out on the UK mainland.

He was, in effect, under almost continuous police scrutiny until his arrest in 1996.

Horne was not an easy target for police officers carrying out this work. This was not because his anti-surveillance skills made tracking him particularly difficult.

It was simply that the sheer tedium of his lifestyle proved a serious challenge for those tasked to watch his every movement, 24 hours a day, days and weeks on end.

Horne was utterly committed to his cause. Even before his death, his entire life was devoted to animal rights issues.

He lived in austere conditions, sometimes a single room with no television or radio, often with no telephone contact with the outside world - due to a fear, a justifiable fear, that his conversations might be monitored.

The surveillance officers' life would often consist, for days, of simply watching a flat in a run down area, with no apparent activity.

Spice was added when their charge visited his local supermarket to buy food, but even then he did nothing in any way exciting. The dream of many an officer, to witness, or even better to photograph, Barry Horne secretly buying a burger or a steak, was never realised.

His social life seemed limited to manning the animal rights stall in the local shopping precinct on Saturday lunchtimes, or an occasional visit to a local pub. There, in case he was being watched, almost no conversation would
occur.

Only on rare trips to London or elsewhere would Horne reveal his capabilities. Suddenly metamorphosed from a life of apparent drudgery, he became Barry Horne the terrorist, teasing his tormentors with anti-surveillance techniques learned from books and weekend workshops.

He lived a life that assumed he was forever being followed. Despite this, nothing except prison could prevent him following his beliefs.

In time, it was inevitable that his drive to commit offences would result in him being caught in the act of doing so. Nothing else would have stopped him - a sentiment reflected by the severity of the sentence he eventually
received.

Horne's commitment to his cause was respected by some of the officers whose task it was, ultimately, to send him to prison. Indeed, some, as with the general public, had sympathy with much of the sentiment behind his beliefs.

The methods he chose to achieve his ends, however, alienated him from any mainstream opinion. To most, only in the detail was he different from almost
any other terrorist.