TVScope: Horizon: The 7/7 Bombers - A Psychological Investigation BBC2, Thursday, October 27th, 9pm.
The men who carried out the London bombings in July were like you and me.
That is the uncomfortable truth which emerged from Horizon's psychological investigation of these and other suicide bombers.
The programme-makers presented an impressive array of evidence to back up their theory.
Prof Ariel Merari of the University of Tel Aviv has spoken to the families of the 200 suicide bombers who have killed more than 5,000 people in Israel. His conclusion is that there is nothing that marks them out from anybody else.
Prof Scott Atran, of the National Centre for Anthropological Research in Paris, has developed a "bunch of guys" theory about suicide bombers. Bombers are members of small groups which can best be described, in his view, "as a bunch of guys".
To do what suicide bombers do, "you do not have to be evil, you do not have to be mad, you just have to be in the right context", forensic psychologist Dr Andrew Silke of the University of East London told the programme.
That is a very unpalatable idea. It suggests that any of us, given the right combination of circumstances, could plant a bomb on a train, on a bus or in a restaurant. It may be unpalatable but it is not new. The programme reminded us of the "shock" experiment conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University in the 1960s.
He found that perfectly normal people were willing to administer lethal levels of electric shocks to other people for failing to answer a question correctly. They had been told the other person was undergoing a memory test and that they should administer an increasing level of electric shock every time an incorrect answer was given. At the urgings of the experimenter, almost two-thirds administered shocks up to the lethal level, although they could hear the cries of anguish. What they did not know was that there were no shocks and the person being "tested" was an actor.
As members of a loyal group, the London bombers were able to sacrifice their own lives and those of others in the July bombings. It was also loyalty to the group that ensured that, after they separated on the morning of July 7th, each set off his bomb killing himself and those around him.
It is also necessary to dehumanise the victims in the minds of the bombers, according to Prof Merari. The programme also made the point that suicide bombing has no necessary link with religion.
The programme provided a valuable insight into the phenomenon of suicide bombings which, unfortunately, seems to be here to stay. And that phenomenon involves using people like us as cannon fodder to be killed by people like us.
• Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor.