His actions, she said, had devastated his victims and left Ms Brooks 'living in a state of fear'. But what you cannot do is enforce your views with violence.' Sentencing Currie, Judge Zoe Smith said: 'You are entitled to hold strong views and to oppose vivisection by protesting peacefully. He was carrying a fire lighter and cigarette lighter and wearing a mask. Currie was arrested at the end of the family's street, close to a bicycle on which he planned to escape. The couple's two children, aged 11 and 14, were in the house at the time.

He fled, and a second bomb was found abandoned in a hedge. On the evening of the attack, in Caversham, Reading, Ms Brooks and her partner disturbed Currie planting a device under one of their cars. One posting on a website which claims to speak for the ALF read: 'You profit from animal testing. Her family had been the subject of a 'virulent campaign of harassment and intimidation', the court heard, in which her cars had been damaged and she had been sent violently abusive letters. On March 26 this year Currie attempted to bomb the car of Caroline Brooks, the sales and marketing manager of a firm called PDP Couriers, which carries out work on behalf of a subsidiary of HLS. The attack on the family followed years of phone calls and intimidation at their home. The businessman was away from home, but his wife and another daughter, aged eight, were asleep inside at the time.

It exploded in what firefighters described as a 'large fireball' shortly after being discovered by Mr Blackburn's adult daughter at 11pm.

In the first of two attacks for which he was convicted, Currie targeted the home of Paul Blackburn, a senior executive for GlaxoSmithKline, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in September last year, placing a device made of matches, cigarettes and a bottle of white spirit on the doorstep. At least six separate but similar offences involving incendiary devices are being investigated across seven police forces. Both companies have indirect links to Huntingdon Life Sciences, Britain's biggest drug-testing laboratory, which has been the target of a sustained campaign by activists opposed to animal testing. In what police described as a 'devastating blow' to animal rights extremism, Donald Currie, 40, was told he would be subject to parole conditions for the rest of his life, even after his release from prison, such was the danger to the public.Д¬urrie, an unemployed former psychiatric nurse of no fixed abode, planted home-made bombs outside the homes of a senior pharmaceutical company executive and the director of a courier firm, one of which ignited and could have caused serious injury, Reading crown court was told. An extremist described as the Animal Liberation Front's leading bomber was jailed for 12 years and placed on licence for life yesterday after a bombing campaign against people he believed were associated with animal research.

Animal liberation front alf