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| Terror Networks |
| Terrorists plan to build bombs in mid-flight |
| 2004-02-09 |
| Now the repeated flight cancellations make sense. Presumably al Ghamdi or someone similar revealed the names of some of the operatives, which is why kids and old people with ’suspicious names’ have been enough to have a flight cancelled. Islamic militants have conducted dry runs of a devastating new style of bombing on aircraft flying to Europe, intelligence sources believe. The tactics, which aim to evade aviation security systems by placing only components of explosive devices on passenger jets, allowing militants to assemble them in the air, have been tried out on planes flying between the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe, security sources say. Concerns that militants might assemble a bomb or another weapon on board were a key factor in the series of recent cancellations of transatlantic flights. Last weekend British Airways stopped flights from London to Washington and Miami for fear of an attack and Air France also cancelled scheduled flights. Security agencies are now hunting scores of militants who have been trained in the new tactics. The warning, passed to Western agencies by Middle Eastern intelligence services, is based on interrogations of Islamic militants captured in the Arabian Gulf and is corroborated by intercepted communications between terrorist cells and interviews with prisoners held by the US government at Guantanamo Bay. Officials in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere are believed to have warned that at least 12 dry runs may have been completed and to have said that the terrorists are aiming to try out their plans on flights around the Mediterranean and the Middle East before attempting to bomb a transatlantic route, where security precautions are now very tight. Militants know that individual components are far easier to smuggle through airport security than an assembled bomb. In May 2002 nearly 100 grammes of pentrite, a plastic explosive used by the alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid, was found hidden in the armrest of a Moroccan jet when it landed in Metz, France. At the time, investigators said they thought it had been put there as a warning. Now French officials suspect the explosives were placed on the jet as a trial of the new tactics. Though some investigators fear they may be the victim of deliberate ’disinformation’, officials say that they cannot risk ignoring the warnings. Ali Abd Rahman al-Ghamdi, alleged to be one of the masterminds of a suicide attack that killed 35 in Riyadh last May, is thought to have revealed the new tactics after giving himself up to Saudi authorities weeks after the blast. Shortly after the capture of al-Ghamdi, who is believed to be close to senior al-Qaeda figures, the US government’s Transportation Security Administration issued an urgent memo detailing new threats to aviation and warning that terrorists in teams of five might be planning suicide missions to hijack commercial airliners. An FBI bulletin last November was more specific. It warned that ’terrorists are considering the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) assembled on board to hijack an aircraft or, alternatively, destroy it over heavily populated areas in the event of passenger or crew resistance. Components of IEDs can be smuggled on to an aircraft, concealed in either clothing or personal carry-on items such as shampoo and medicine bottles, and assembled on board. In many cases of suspicious passenger activity, incidents have taken place in the aircraft’s forward lavatory.’ |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #7 Watch what you say... Minetta might start having screeners check for wheels in the soles of all passengers' shoes :) -Vic |
| Posted by: Vic 2004-2-9 8:06:05 PM |
| #6 That would be impossible Vic... the two masses would have to be on rollerskates to built up sufficient speed and rollerskates are not allowed on scheduled airlines. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-2-9 7:25:06 PM |
| #5 Before boarding I will start pulling off my belt and place it in my pants pocket where it will be handy for choking the living doodoo out of one of the three clowns if they line up to use the restroom in sucession. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-2-9 4:42:35 PM |
| #4 Terrorists are going to assemble a bomb in flight? After Richard Reid's failed attempt to blow off his own feet, I don't have a lot of confidence in the ability of his compatriots to execute this plan. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-2-9 4:39:34 PM |
| #3 You know, with all of this talk about alQ constructing bombs midflight, and with talk of their having nukes, I think I see what's really going on :) Stay with me here for a sec :) You take two jihadis, and place them at the front and back of the plane. Give them each a subcritical hemisphere of U235. Midflight, each pulls out his hemisphere, then starts running like "Shaytan hisself" was chasing him! They carefully collide mid-plane, and boom - you have alQ's nuke! :) Okay, maybe I'm missing something. But remember that video footage that surfaced a few months ago of the AC130 gunship attacking a nest of alQ guys in Afghanistan? Remember how after the shooting started, these guys started running around and bumping into each other in what appeared to be just your typical scene of chaos? Was that **really** chaos? Or did months of the gueling "running and bumping into each other at full speed," drill cause them to mistakedly tip their hat too early in the conflict? :) -Vic :) |
| Posted by: Vic 2004-2-9 2:23:56 PM |
| #2 What??? They found pentrite in the arm rest! Why would terrorists, who would love to blow up a plane, do this to "create disinformation"???? Who are these people who come up with these absurd types of conclusions?? The point of disinformation is to steer your opponent towards one angle while you're working another. This might be disinformation in the sense that terror attacks are being planned which have nothing to do with the methods being discussed - and the disclosures are simply a red herring to draw investigators away from other possibilities. These other possibilities may also include non-airline-related attacks. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-2-9 11:33:56 AM |
| #1 Though some investigators fear they may be the victim of deliberate ’disinformation’, officials say that they cannot risk ignoring the warnings. What??? They found pentrite in the arm rest! Why would terrorists, who would love to blow up a plane, do this to "create disinformation"???? Who are these people who come up with these absurd types of conclusions?? |
| Posted by: B 2004-2-9 8:57:59 AM |