AN EXTREMIST described as the Animal Liberation Front’s main bomber faces life in jail after admitting yesterday that he planted explosive devices outside the home of a company director.

Detectives are now linking Donald Currie to ten similar attacks under investigation in six police force areas.

Currie, 40, pleaded guilty at Reading Crown Court to arson and to possessing explosive substances with intent to endanger life and property.

His assets could also be seized by Huntingdon Life Sciences, the company that he has targeted. He is the subject of a £224,000 charging order obtained last week by lawyers acting for the company.

A senior police source said that Currie was the Animal Liberation Front’s “main active bomber” and described his detention as “a significant blow to animal rights extremism”.

The unemployed psychiatric nurse was arrested days after the bombing incident in March, for which the ALF claimed responsibility on its website.

An improvised bomb made from weedkiller and sugar was left under a car at the house of Caroline Brooks, 45, sales and marketing director of the courier company PDP. A second device was found in a nearby garden, where it appeared to have been discarded. Neither was detonated but both could have inflicted serious damage.

Mrs Brooks was targeted because of PDP’s links with Huntingdon Life Sciences, Britain’s largest animal research centre, which is the focus of a relentless campaign by activists.

Her property was also attacked in October 2004, when the front claimed responsibility for an acid attack on two cars.

Currie was detained in Reading, near to where Mrs Brooks lives, after an air and ground search by police.

A vegan who lived at a £200,000 house in Bournemouth with his wife and three children, Currie has a string of previous convictions for offences that include criminal damage, assault, threatening behaviour, obstructing police, failure to surrender to bail and destroying badger traps.

His wife, Karen, 38, is also an activist. She was fined £50 last September after being convicted of assault for sounding an air horn in the ear of a laboratory worker who confronted protesters outside his home in the middle of the night.

As well as admitting the offences in Reading, Currie pleaded guilty to aggravated arson at a private property in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, last September, which police believe was potentially fatal. He ignited a petrol bomb that caused a fire on the doorstep of Paul Blackburn, the corporate controller of GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical company.

Mr Blackburn’s daughter had just arrived home in her car at 11pm when Currie lit the device as her mother opened the front door. Police said that Mrs Blackburn could have been killed if she had not shut the door quickly. DNA evidence linked the device to Currie.

He denied arson in relation to a £140,000 fire at a cardboard box factory in Williton, Somerset, in May last year. The prosecution did not contest this charge.

Currie was remanded in custody and is expected to be sentenced next month, after psychiatric reports.

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