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Posted by: Neil on Friday, August 11, 2006 - 03:19 PM
It seems that Home Secretary John Reid was trying to send a message that something was in the air when he made a speech on Wednesday warning that the UK was facing the greatest sustained threat to national security since the Second World War. Some questioned whether there were political motives behind the announcement, but now we know different.
Bringing down airliners with bombs has long been a goal of British al-Qaida supporters. The two British would-be shoe-bombers, Richard Reid and Sajid Badat, are the two best known cases. Less well-known is the case of an Algerian, Abbas Boutrab, who was convicted late last year in Northern Ireland.
His story may well provide insights into yesterday's events which paralysed the air industry. He was working on a new generation of bombs being developed by militants that are designed to evade airport scanning equipment. Boutrab was apparently caught, by chance, in the midst of constructing a bomb that could be concealed inside an electrical device such as a personal music player.
One of the documents he was found in possession of was a guide produced by British al-Qaida supporters, which described how to make a wide variety of innovative devices. The document was encrypted and password-protected, but further examination showed that it had been produced by a group of British militants connected to the radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza.
Boutrab never cracked under questioning and it remains a mystery as to whether he was working alone, or with others. Experience would suggest that he would have been working with a wider network of support cells and probably other would-be bombers on a plot to simultaneously destroy more than one aircraft.
Multiple co-ordinated attacks is an al-Qaida trademark. Since 9/11, and in the face of increased security measures adopted by airlines and airports following the Lockerbie disaster of 1988, which was caused when a bomb exploded in an unaccompanied piece of luggage on the Pan-Am flight, the network's explosives specialists have been working to produce plans for new types of bombs that can evade these measures. Hence the decision to prevent passengers carrying hand luggage on to planes which many people criticised yesterday as a draconian step.
Several different plans have been worked on, though all share similarities, in that the new bombs are constructed from several different components that are designed to be assembled inside an aircraft toilet and detonated.
In June, I obtained several documents which contained actual construction plans for these new kinds of devices. One of the advantages for the bombers is that only a small explosion is needed to destroy an aircraft. All that is required is that the charge be powerful enough to pierce the pressurised hull of an aircraft. In theory, only a few grammes of explosive is needed.
The documents show how that can be concealed inside seemingly innocent items, such as medicine capsules. It also spells out ways to disguise the smell of the explosive to evade scanners and sniffer dogs, by adding a compound that acts as a masking agent. There have also been experiments with liquid explosives.
One line read: "Detonate inside the plane's toilet and do not make the mistake of the shoe-bomber."
The details of the plot bear all the hallmarks of an updated version of a plan hatched by al-Qaida in 1995. Called Project Bojinka, it was a plot to destroy a dozen airliners mid-flight, en route from the Far East to the USA.
It was devised by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who would later go on to mastermind the September 11 attacks in the USA.
The plan centred on using "micro-bombs" composed of an undetectable liquid explosive, which would be carried in hand luggage. The bombs would be detonated with timers.
The plan failed after terrorists involved in the plan were arrested during the planning phase, otherwise a massive death toll would have resulted.
The big question now is whether there are other cells still at large – either inside or outside the UK. In recent years, there are indications that al-Qaida planners want to launch a series of simultaneous attacks in different countries, to go a step further than 9/11. What we've seen may be part of a wider plan involving perhaps other European countries.
Police sources have said that the attacks were not planned for yesterday, so the threat looks set to remain for several days.
Neil Doyle
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"Tolerance has made UK a breeding ground for militants"
Posted by: Neil on Sunday, August 13, 2006 - 10:53 AM
A nuclear explosion at the Port of Long Beach would have catastrophic consequences for the United States, killing 60,000 people immediately, exposing 150,000 more to hazardous radiation and causing 10 times the economic loss resulting from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, according to a long-awaited study released Tuesday.
Two years in the making, the detailed analysis by the Rand Corp.'s Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy paints a terrifying picture not only of the possibility of such an attack but of its immediate and long-term effects on Southern California, the nation and the global economy.