How the spooks keep tabs on Scots would-be bombers

IT WAS the computer specialists at Britain's top-secret listening station, GCHQ, who uncovered the existence of Scotland's first home-grown terror suspect. Mohammed Atif Siddique's cover was blown after his e-mails to a man in the north-west of England, who was already suspected as an al-Qaeda operative, were intercepted.

The young Scot's radicalisation from quiet schoolboy to potential suicide bomber has been widely recorded but it can today be revealed that he is far from alone.

Security sources believe there are up to 20 individuals who have been in contact with other radicals across the globe, formulating similar plans for new terror outrages. (...)