Dubai parcel bomb was designed to explode in mid-air

Mtoday news

Dubai, Oct 31: British security experts MISSED parcel bomb during first sweep. Woman student held in Yemen after SIM card is found on device

Saudi Al Qaeda bomb mastermind named as prime suspect. ’Bombs’ were addressed to synagogues in Chicago

One of the two bombs posted from Yemen last week was transported on two passenger planes before being seized in Dubai, it was revealed today.

Qatar Airways says the bomb was carried on an Airbus A320 from Yemeni capital Sanaa to Doha where it was then transferred to another Qatar Airways plane to Dubai.

The news came after David Cameron said yesterday the ink-bomb found on a US-bound cargo plane in Britain was designed to explode in mid-air.

‘We believe the device was designed to go off on the aeroplane,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘There is no early evidence it [the explosion] was designed to take place over British soil, but of course we cannot rule that out.’

He spoke as it was revealed that a Saudi bombmaker has been named as a key suspect in the plot to bring down the cargo jets and two women were detained in Yemen in connection with attempt.

 

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

 

Prime suspect: Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri is a Saudi bombmaker linked to a foiled attack on the head of the country’s security services last year


Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, who tops a Saudi Arabian terrorism list, is the brother of a suicide bomber killed in an attempt to kill Saudi counter-terrorism chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef last year.
That attack, as well as another attempt on a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009, involved the use of pentaerythritol trinitrate (PETN) - a highly potent explosive that appears to be the weapon of choice of al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.

At least one of the two US-bound parcel bombs sent from Yemen addressed to synagogues in Chicago and intercepted in Dubai and Britain on Friday employed PETN.

The US official said Asiri was being closely looked at by authorities in view of his experience with explosives.

There were also indications he may have been the bombmaker behind the Christmas Day attempt and the failed attack on Prince Nayaf last year, the official added.

Saudi Arabia, which provided intelligence that helped identify the parcel bomb threat, put Asiri at the top of its terrorism list in 2009.

Security officials are scrambling to track down any AQAP operatives behind the latest plot.

The bomb was found on Friday at East Midlands Airport, near Nottingham. A similar device was found on a plane in Dubai. Both bombs were in packages addressed to Jewish organisations in Chicago.

One is a synagogue where one of President Obama’s closest associates, Rahm Emanuel, has been educating his children.
And US security experts warned last night that the bombs could just as easily have ended up on passenger planes, which carry more than half of the international air cargo coming into the country.

Home Secretary Theresa May, speaking yesterday after a meeting of the Government’s Cobra emergency planning committee, said the device found in Britain was ‘viable’ and ‘could have exploded’.

The parcel bomb was first flown from Sana’a to Doha on a Qatar Airbus A320 before being transferred on to another passenger jet to Dubai

A lorry leaves the FedEx US parcel delivery firm’s regional hub at Dubai airport. Yemeni security forces were searching for suspects who posted parcel bombs on two US-bound freighter flights

She added: ‘The target of the device may have been an aircraft and, had it detonated, the aircraft could have been brought down.’

She said the terrorist threat level would remain at its current level of ‘severe’, which indicates an attack is ‘highly likely’, and announced a ban on all unaccompanied air freight from Yemen moving into or through the UK.
Yemeni police arrested a medical student believed to be in her twenties in the capital, Sana’a, together with her mother.

It is believed a SIM card found attached to the Dubai bomb was linked to the woman. And 24 suspicious parcels were being examined at Yemen’s international airport.

Investigators said the suspect was detained as part of a manhunt for a number of people believed to have used forged documents and ID cards that played a role in the plot that was thwarted on Friday. All of them are believed to have links to Al Qaeda’s faction in Yemen.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates had provided him with information that helped identify the woman as a suspect.

He said security forces had surrounded a house in the capital city of Sanaa that was believed to be holding the woman. A security official later confirmed the woman had been arrested.
President Saleh also stressed Yemen’s commitment on fighting al-Qaeda, adding that more than 70 officers and soldiers have been killed in combat between Yemeni forces and al-Qaeda operatives in the past four weeks.   The Yemeni prosecution authority shut down offices belonging to UPS, FedEx and DHL in Sana’a.

Security sources said that they detained 26 parcels from FedEx and UPS offices and arrested a number of the two offices’ employees for questioning.  

Police Colonel Mujahid Abu Omar denied that they arrested any of the employees of the FedEx or UPS.  

But he said they have been investigating all employees in the offices.

The offices were full with investigators from the General prosecution, national security, political security and other security bodies on Saturday night.

On Saturday an official source at the Yemeni government denied any UPS flights from Yemen and questioned why Yemen had been named as the location where the bomb plot is alleged to have originated.

The official said there were no direct flights from Yemen to London or to the United states.

He added that firm security measures have been adopted in all Yemeni airports using sophisticated devices for searching suspected packages according to the international security standards approved by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

The Metropolitan Police said initial tests indicated that the bomb found in the UK had the ‘potential to bring down an aircraft in flight if detonated’.
More details also started to emerge about how it was discovered. Found in a UPS container, it comprised what police described as a ‘manipulated’ computer printer cartridge, which was covered in white powder and had wires protruding from it.

It initially tested negative for traces of explosives. But it is understood that a further search uncovered a second suspicious package containing a ‘cleverly hidden’ device in a printer, which included a mobile phone as one of its components.

A Yemeni woman walks past UPS office in Sana’a, Yemen. Yemeni authorities on Saturday arrested a woman suspected of sending two mail bombs found on cargo planes

Police troopers block a street in Sana’a after security forces on Saturday arrested a woman believed to be involved in sending explosive packages bound for the United States

Speaking last night before a meeting at Chequers with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Cameron said: ‘A package that started in Yemen, that landed in Germany, that landed in Britain en route to America, it just shows how united and determined we have to be to defeat terrorism.’
He confirmed he had spoken to Mr Obama, adding: ‘I have also spoken to President Saleh of Yemen, making the point that we have to do even more to crack down and cut out the cancer of Al Qaeda in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.
‘We have immediately banned packages coming to or through Britain from Yemen and we will be looking extremely carefully at any further steps we have to take.
‘In the end, these terrorists think that our interconnectedness, our openness as modern countries is what makes us weak. They are wrong – it is a source of our strength, and we will use that strength, that determination, that power and that solidarity to defeat them.’

Brandon Fried, a cargo security expert and executive director of the US Airforwarders Association, warned that the devices could have ended up on passenger planes.

He revealed that cargo is sometimes lightly inspected or even unexamined, particularly when it comes from countries without well-developed aviation security systems.

The New York Police Department responds to a suspcious package in front of a Jewish group home and synagogue, this the day after explosives were discovered in packages shipped from Yemen