LONDON (AFP) — Police arrested a "radicalised" convert to Islam after he was injured in a bomb explosion in a city centre on Thursday.
The centre of Exeter was evacuated after the lunchtime blast at a restaurant popular with families in a shopping centre and bomb disposal experts and sniffer dogs were sent in.
Police later named the 22-year-old, who suffered cuts to his eye and facial burns in the explosion and remains in police custody at a hospital, as Nicky Reilly, a man with a history of mental illness.
Reilly has not yet been charged with any offences, but police said armed officers had raided an address in nearby Plymouth linked to him and were searching it on Thursday evening.
Deputy Chief Constable Tony Melville said initial police inquiries suggested Reilly "had adopted the Islamic faith."
"We believe, despite his weak and vulnerable state, he was preyed upon, radicalised and taken advantage of," he said.
No one else was injured in the explosion although there were about 15 people in Giraffe, part of a countrywide chain of 25 restaurants that market themselves as friendly to families and children, at the time.
Chief Constable Stephen Otter earlier confirmed that there were "two explosive devices found at the scene."
"The injured man had one of the explosive devices on him, which partially went off. The other, in the vicinity of the restaurant, did not go off," Otter said.
Both Melville and Otter said it was too early to determine the motive behind the incident.
A 19-year-old Muslim convert was arrested last month in Bristol in western England and charged with explosives and extremism offences, although there was no immediate suggestion that the events in Exeter were connected to his case.
Britain has been on heightened alert since suicide bombings in July 2005 which killed 56 people on three London underground trains and a bus.
The country's national threat level has not been lowered below "Severe", the second-highest of five levels, since the system was introduced in August 2006.
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