Source: Daily Mail
By DAVID WILLIAMS and REBECCA CAMBER
Last updated at 12:40 PM on 1st November 2010
Last updated at 12:40 PM on 1st November 2010
- Further 26 suspect packages tracked down
- U.S. counter-terror chiefs to treat every arrival from Yemen as potential danger
- British airline boss warns of 'ludicrous' extra measures to hit passengers
American intelligence services were desperately hunting for more Al Qaeda ink bombs last night amid fears of a wave of plane attacks.
One of the U.S.’s most senior counter-terrorism officials said every package sent from Yemen was being treated as a potential danger – and Britain has banned all cargo movements to and from the Gulf country.
Authorities in Yemen said they had seized 26 suspect packages, indicating that the scale of the plot could be far larger than the two devices already found – both of which were powerful enough to down a plane and devastate a city.
High alert: Authorities in Yemen believe the scale of the plot could be far larger than the two devices already found. Both of which were powerful enough to down a plane and devastate a city
Fears that a terrorist spectacular could still take place intensified after a Middle Eastern airline said that one of the bombs, discovered in Dubai, had been on board two passenger planes before it was found.
Qatar Airways said the device hidden in a printer cartridge had flown on a scheduled Airbus 320 flight to Doha before being transferred on to a second passenger plane for the flight to Dubai. Up to 15 per cent of air cargo is flown in the hold of passenger flights.
The other device, also in an ink cartridge, was discovered in a UPS parcels distribution depot at East Midlands Airport on Friday, following a tip-off from a source in Saudi Arabia.
John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said: ‘It would be very imprudent to presume that there are no other packages out there.’
He said forensic analysis indicated the two explosive devices had been made by Yemen-based Al Qaeda bombmaker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri.
He was also responsible for the bomb carried by a Nigerian student who tried to blow up a passenger plane with explosives concealed in his underwear as it landed in Detroit on Christmas Day.
Al-Asiri is now one of the world’s most wanted men. Other members of Al Qaeda’s high command in Yemen have been killed by CIA drones targeting them from the sky.
Mr Brennan said the two bombs had been powerful enough to bring down a plane and were ‘very sophisticated’ in the way they were designed and concealed.
‘They were self-contained. They were able to be detonated at a time of the terrorists’ choosing.
‘It is my understanding that these devices did not need someone to actually physically detonate them.’
He added that Al Qaeda ‘are still at war with us and we are very much at war with them. They are going to try to identify vulnerabilities that might exist in the system.’
British and U.S. investigators were flying to Yemen last night to help in the investigation into the plot blamed on the terror group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which both MI6 and MI5 have warned poses a serious threat to the UK.
In Yemen searches of every FedEx and UPS office ended in the 26 packages being seized by authorities. They are expected to be passed to the CIA for examination.
According to a Yemeni security official, at least five suspects have been arrested and interrogated since Saturday over who might be behind the mail bombs and a number of employees of the shipping companies, including two from FedEx, are being investigated.
Yemen is also asking for more information from Saudi Arabia since it was the source of the tip-off.
Yemeni authorities arrested then freed a 22-year-old female student, Hanan al-Samawi, who posted the two packages in Sanaa to synagogues in Chicago, leaving her telephone number and a copy of her identity card which were used to trace her.
A computer science student and daughter of an oil worker, she was arrested together with her 45-year-old mother at the family’s home in the Yemeni capital.
But lawyers said she was an innocent dupe whose identity appeared to have been stolen.
Home Secretary Theresa May said the Government had already acted to ban all unaccompanied freight from Yemen coming to Britain, and was in talks with the industry about further restrictions.
‘We are going to be looking at the security that we adopt in relation to freight. We will be talking to the industry about those measures,’ she said.
‘What became clear overnight Friday and into Saturday was that it was indeed a viable device and could have exploded.
‘It could have exploded on the aircraft, and it could have exploded when the aircraft was in mid air. Had that happened it could have brought the aircraft down.’
The U.S. authorities said yesterday that they would look again at the crash of a UPS jumbo jet in September, in which two died.
The three-year-old Boeing 747-400 made an emergency landing at a military airfield in Dubai after smoke filled the cockpit.
But Emirati investigators said that a thorough inquiry had found there was no evidence of a blast or an explosive device.
Master bombmaker and the hate preacher who quotes Dickens
by David Williams
The prime suspect in the Al Qaeda ink-bomb plot is an explosives mastermind who is feared to have trained up to 30 British fanatics.
Master bombmaker and the hate preacher who quotes Dickens
by David Williams
The prime suspect in the Al Qaeda ink-bomb plot is an explosives mastermind who is feared to have trained up to 30 British fanatics.
Saudi Arabian-born Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, who is suspected of making the devices found in cargo at East Midlands Airport and Dubai, is said to have been specialising in building bombs for Lockerbie-style attacks in which aircraft explode over mainland cities.
He is believed to have made the device carried by one-time British student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his attempt to blow up a plane over the U.S. on Christmas Day.
Spreading hate: Ibrahim Al Asiri (left) and Anwar Awlaki are key figures in an Al Qaeda operation in Yemen - the spiritual home and birth place of Osama Bin Laden - and North Africa which MI6 and MI5 believe poses a 'real threat' to the UK
Abdulmutallab has admitted that, while training in Yemen, he met other foreign recruits, including Britons, and it is feared that as many as 30 sympathetic with Al Qaeda’s visions and methods have returned home.
All could have been trained by 28-year-old Al Asiri in the Yemeni province of Al Gouf, 90 miles south of the capital Sanaa.
He is said to be in regular contact in Yemen with radical cleric Anwar Awlaki, an Al Qaeda commander who is known to be targeting Britain and the U.S., countries where he lived and preached.
Both men are key figures in an Al Qaeda operation in Yemen – the spiritual home and birth place of Osama Bin Laden – and North Africa which MI6 and MI5 believe poses a ‘real threat’ to the UK.
Described as the main bombmaker for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Asiri has also been linked to a device used last April by a suicide bomber dressed as a schoolboy in an assassination attempt against the British ambassador to Yemen, Tim Torlot.
He also built a bomb for his own brother Abdullah, 23, to carry out a daring attack on Saudi prince Muhammad Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the minister who has personally led a programme to encourage jihadists to reform.
Abdullah was granted an audience with the minister in his office but when the device hidden in his underwear was triggered, he died and Prince Muhammad survived.
Awlaki has been named as the man who recruited Abdulmutallab, a former student of University College London.
Seen by intelligence officials as the ‘most significant’ commander in the region, he is suspected of masterminding the ink bomb plot and the recruiting of jihadists from countries such as Britain and Germany.
He lived in London between 2002 and 2004 and was a well known figure in hardline mosques, universities and colleges. He is said to address his followers in flawless English over the Internet and, bizarrely, is fond of quoting Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens.
The 39-year-old claims to have fallen in love with Dickens while behind bars in Yemen in 2006 accused of planning to kidnap a U.S. military attache. ‘What fascinated me,’ he wrote, ‘were the amazing characters Dickens created and the similarity of some of them to some people today. For example, the thick and boastful Mr Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times was similar to George W. Bush.’
A one-time imam and civil engineering graduate in Colorado, Awlaki’s sermons in the U.S. were attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers who looked on him as their ‘spiritual adviser’.
He rose to international prominence a year ago when he was linked to Major Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army officer who ran amok at the Fort Hood military base in Texas, killing 13 people. Awlaki subsequently praised him as a ‘hero’.
Last week in his first public speech, the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, singled Awlaki out, describing him as an ‘Al Qaeda leader’ who ‘broadcasts propaganda and terrorist instruction over the internet’.
Two months earlier, Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, warned of Awlaki: ‘His influence is all the wider because he preaches and teaches in English.’
For months intelligence and security officials on both sides of the Atlantic have been monitoring the increased significance of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which was formed in January 2009 by a merger of two regional off shoots of the Islamic militant network.
Led by a former aide to Bin Laden, the group has vowed to attack oil facilities, foreigners and security forces as it seeks to topple the monarchy in Saudi Arabia and Government in Yemen to be replaced by an Islamic caliphate.
Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has long been an ideal base for jihadists.
With its rugged mountains and traditionally weak central authority, it is terrain well suited to militant groups searching for hiding places and training camps.
With its rugged mountains and traditionally weak central authority, it is terrain well suited to militant groups searching for hiding places and training camps.
Anti-terror investigators say there ‘is evidence’ the network has been seeking to perfect techniques in Yemen such as that used by Abdulmutallab to beat increased airport security by building bombs on aircraft.
A composite picture showing the contents of a US-bound parcel displayed by police in the Gulf emirate of Dubai yesterday. Powerful explosives connected to a mobile phone detonator were discovered inside the printer
How deadly cargo can be tracked through the air.
Terrorists would have been able to track the movement of the bombs online – and could have used the information to time their detonation.
Major package delivery firms such as UPS send minute-by-minute shipment status information to the customer via e-mail or through mobile phone alerts.
The moment a package is dispatched the customer is sent a message.
Every time it is scanned en route the customer also receives a notification of its current location.
The bomb discovered in Dubai contained an electrical circuit linked to a mobile-phone SIM card.
Police believe the terrorists planned to detonate the device by sending a text message or telephoning the SIM card phone number.
A text message would have been enough to activate a short fuse on the bomb, igniting the explosive material PETN, or pentaerythritol trinitrate, hidden in the printer.
It is likely that major cities would have been the main target as the plane came down to land because the plotters would be unable to get a mobile phone signal to the package when the aircraft was travelling at 30,000ft.
Police failed to spot explosive
Police are facing questions about their examination of the package at East Midlands Airport after equipment initially failed to detect that it contained explosives.
Leicestershire Police gave clearance for the plane which brought in the ink bomb to continue its journey to the U.S.
Officers also removed the cordon around the airport freight distribution centre just 100 yards from the runway where passenger jets continued to land and depart throughout the day.
It was only after news came in of the bomb in Dubai that the print cartridge was re-examined and its deadly nature realised.
Lord Carlile, who reviews anti-terrorism legislation, said: ‘We must have a look at the technology to ensure that it’s absolutely up to date. This is all about trying to keep one step ahead of terrorists.’
Airport checks stay, says May
Home Secretary Theresa May has rejected calls for a relaxing of passenger security checks at airports.
BA chairman Martin Broughton last week described many of the checks as ‘completely redundant’.
He called for the UK to stop ‘kowtowing’ to U.S. security demands – such as asking passengers to take off their shoes and screening laptops separately.
Mrs May told the BBC yesterday: ‘Sometimes it can feel frustrating for an individual going through.
‘We are in a battle against the terrorists and I think it is important that of course we look at the security levels that we have in place in terms of physical security and requirements on passengers who are going through airports.
‘But I think most people recognise that it is important we have a rigorous system in place.’
Coalition clash on house arrest
Controversial anti-terrorist control orders are to escape the axe in a move which could stretch the coalition agreement to breaking point.
A Government review of Labour terror laws will conclude that there is no alternative to keeping a small number of suspects under house arrest.
This is despite huge pressure from senior LibDems for the orders to be scrapped. They campaigned during the election on scrapping the powers and had believed the Tories would follow suit.
David Cameron is preparing for a major showdown with his coalition partners, reportedly saying: ‘We are heading for a f*****g car crash.’
Yesterday, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne ratcheted up the pressure between the two sides, saying that putting people under house arrest ‘is not the sort of thing that we have traditionally done in this country’.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325470/Bomb-device-Dubai-PASSENGER-flights.html#ixzz142GzQphf
