2010 transatlantic aircraft bomb plot
On October 29, 2010, two packages, each containing a bomb consisting of 300 to 400 grams (11–14 oz) of plastic explosives and a detonating mechanism, were found on separate cargo planes.
On October 28, Saudi Arabia's deputy interior minister of counterterrorism Prince Muhammad bin Nayef called John Brennan, the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Riyadh, to warn him of the plot.
[7][8] The packages had been deposited by a woman at FedEx and UPS offices in Sana'a, Yemen on October 27, and were scheduled to arrive in Chicago on November 1.
[18] British military and police explosives experts had been alerted to the existence of the bomb, and conducted an initial search of the plane's cargo in the airport's UPS parcels distribution depot.
[20] U.S. authorities provided the tracking number of the package, and the computer printer inside was scanned with explosives detection equipment, x-rayed, subjected to chemical swabs, and sniffed by sniffer dogs.
[21][22] Removing the suspect package for further examination, the authorities allowed the UPS plane to proceed to Philadelphia at 4:20 a.m. local time.
British authorities then consulted with officials in Dubai, who had discovered a similar bomb in a printer cartridge, and MI6 spoke with the Saudi tipster.
[31] One package was addressed to a church in Lakeview that had once been the meeting place of Congregation Or Chadash, and the other had been sent to a closed synagogue in East Rogers Park.
[2][31][32] Simon Calder observed in The Independent: Yemen is not a natural provider of office supplies to organisations such as synagogues in the Chicago area.
Therefore, you might fondly imagine that the staff in the parcels offices in the capital, Sana'a, might have checked the despatches more closely before allowing them anywhere near an aircraft, cargo or passengers.
The other was addressed to Reynald Krak (Raynald of Châtillon), a French crusader who was beheaded in 1187 by Sultan Saladin of the 12th-century Muslim Ayyubid dynasty.
[34][35] Fishman points out that this parallels Osama bin Laden posing in front of a map of East Africa shortly before the 1998 United States embassy bombings.
[29][37][38] The bomb found in the UK contained 400 grams (14 oz) of PETN, five times the amount needed to destroy a house.
[37] Hans Michels, professor of safety engineering at University College London, said that just 6 grams (0.2 oz) of PETN—around 2% of what was used—would be enough to blow a hole in a metal plate twice the thickness of an aircraft's skin.
[40] The package intercepted in Dubai was shipped in a cardboard box that also contained souvenirs, clothes, compact discs, and several books written in English.
[43] Britain's Home Secretary, Theresa May, said British investigators concluded the UK device was a functional bomb powerful enough to bring down the aircraft, causing a "supersonic blast".
[43] Since Yemen does not have any regularly scheduled cargo flights, the perpetrators likely knew the bombs would end up on passenger planes.
[8] A spokesman for the German Federal Criminal Police Office, where the Dubai x-rays were reviewed, stated they would not have detected the bomb.
[37] On November 5, 2010, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) took responsibility for the plot,[1] posting on a number of radical Islamist websites monitored by the SITE Intelligence Group and the NEFA Foundation.
[57] On November 21, AQAP provided a detailed account of the plot, including photos of the printer bombs, in its English-language magazine Inspire.
The article said that the mission was a success, because it caused a huge amount of disruption to the world's air traffic and security systems at the very low cost of $4,200.
[65] US officials suggested that Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the main explosives expert for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, likely built the bombs.
[66] Al-Asiri had previously recruited his younger brother Abdullah as a suicide bomber, hiding a PETN bomb in his rectum in an attempt on the life of security chief Mohammed bin Nayef.
[29] An Emirates flight containing a package in transit from Yemen to the U.S. was intercepted by Canadian CF-18 and U.S. F-15 fighter jets and escorted to New York as a precaution.
[3][72][73] Britain and the U.S. stopped accepting air cargo from Somalia, and prohibited passengers from carrying certain printer cartridges on flights.
[78] On November 2, four days after the bombs were discovered, al-Awlaki was charged in absentia in Sana'a with plotting to kill foreigners and being an al-Qaeda member in an unrelated matter.
