If you have visited Barcelona, then you would know exactly the location of the horrendous terrorist attack. You would have stood in the same spot as the victims. You would feel affected by it. That’s deliberate. The terrorists want you to think: ‘It could have been me.’
In the last year or so, the terrorism threat in Europe has escalated. We have seen low-tech, difficult to defend knife attacks on popular, easy-to-name locations, vehicles driven into crowds and attacks using guns and explosives, such as the Bataclan attack in Paris.
Seaside horror: The aftermath of the attack in Cambrils, a resort outside Barcelona
Had they been fully successful, the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils could have been far worse than anything we have yet seen, with many hundreds of people dead. It is now clear that these terrorists had intended to construct an immense vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.
Known in the security trade as VBIEDs, they are essentially massive bombs surrounded by a metal vehicle which shatters into shrapnel. They kill and maim everyone in the vicinity and can even bring down buildings. This is a game-changer that marks a significant step up in the terrorist threat.
If I were still head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office – a police unit funded by the Home Office – I would be redoubling efforts to secure Government funding to defend the public against exactly this sort of incident. We identified the threat 12 years ago in a review of the most likely targets for attack after the London bombings on July 7, 2005. We realised then that crowded iconic locations were soft targets and preventing VBIEDs from getting too close was our top priority.
Without going into too much detail, vehicle defences have been put in place, trees have been planted, road layouts have been changed. Work was moving well but then the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition took power in 2010 – and cancelled the scheme in the name of austerity.
Suspects Said Aallaa, left, and Mohamed Hychaini, right, were killed in Cambrils
One of Theresa May’s first actions as Home Secretary was to stop work on crowded places protection and disband the Home Office expert team on the issue at the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism. At the time, that seemed to me like a terribly shortsighted decision. Now it seems foolhardy.
This valuable work will now have to be restarted but we have lost the seven years of improvements that would by now have been in place. Take for example, glass. We know that in any explosion about 90 per cent of people are killed or maimed by flying glass. So why do we still have buildings close to our big iconic targets that do not have blastproof glass?
A simple clear film over the glass is an inexpensive modification. There are many other simple changes that can be made.
Terrorists know that explosives are the deadliest form of direct action. A successful vehicle bomb will be seen on the streets of Europe soon. We must take Barcelona as a wake-up call.
Chris Phillips, former head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, is managing director of the International Protect and Prepare Security Office.