Following the broadcast of its item on Monday, the BBC says it has received a “significant response from listeners.”

BBC Radio 4, on Friday August 1, reported some of the listeners’ responses:

“On Monday’s programme, Yvonne Murray reported on concern in academia following the arrest under the terrorism act of a student and a member of staff at a university. The student had downloaded a copy of the al Qaeda training manual from a US government website, and sent it to a friend.

‘The Al Qaeda training manual mentioned in your programme is also available from the US Amazon website as well as from the US government website; it is strange that the USA is more liberal about this than the UK.’

Peter Mellor is a retired university lecturer who also emailed us about the widely available manual.

‘This so-called training manual was used as evidence in the United States in a trial on terrorism charges. Under US law it is therefore now in the public domain, and can be downloaded by anyone from the website of the attorney general’s office, United States Department of Justice. The manual is of hardly any practical use in planning a terrorist attack but is extremely valuable to researchers because of the insight it provides into the mindset of the fanatical Islamist.’ “