<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/> Description: MailOnline - news, sport, celebrity, science and health stories
Monday, Nov 01 2010 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/weather/index.html> 12PM 10°C 3PM 11°C 5-Day Forecast 'Talcum powder will be on list of banned weapons': Airline boss's astonishing attack on 'ludicrous' security measures in wake of latest terror plot By <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Daily+Mail+Repo rter> Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 10:02 AM on 1st November 2010 * Fears items including talcum power could be banned from all flights * Prime Minister to chair emergency committee Cobra today * Scale of the plot could be far larger as another 26 packages are seized Air travellers face a wave of new security measures in the wake of the Yemen bomb plot. Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary warned even talcum power could end up on the banned list of items people cannot take on planes. He said he feared a new raft of 'ludicrous' airport security measures in reaction to the latest terror plot where bombs hidden in printer ink cartridges were found on U.S.-bound planes in the East Midlands and Dubai. Description: An United Parcel Service (UPS) cargo plane lands at Cologne/Bonn airport near Cologne October 31, 2010. A bomb found on a U.S.-bound cargo plane in Britain was trans-shipped at Cologne Bonn airport in Germany on its outward journey from Yemen. Target: A United Parcel Service cargo plane lands at Cologne yesterday. A bomb found on a U.S.-bound cargo plane at East Midlands Airport was shipped at Cologne on its outward journey from Yemen Description: Terrorists had tried to conceal a bomb inside this printer, which was intercepted by Dubai police en route from the Yemen to Chicago Bomb: Terrorists had tried to conceal a bomb inside this printer, which was intercepted by Dubai police British and American intelligence services were desperately hunting more Al Qaeda ink bombs today amid fears of a wave of plane attacks. And later Prime Minister David Cameron is due to chair a meeting of the emergency committee Cobra. Security chiefs are expected to recommend cranking up airport checks even further. 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 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. But Mr O'Leary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he thought the main impact would be on normal travellers. 'What happens, particularly in the coverage of the Yemeni issues of recent days, is that we have another huge lurch by the securicrats into making travel even more uncomfortable and an even more tedious ordeal for the travelling public,' he said. 'Sadly they always win the day and they lurch around with ludicrous new measures. 'Lord only knows what we'll have now. We will be confiscating white powder at the airports. Talcum powder will probably now be put on a list of banned weapons at airport security. 'The fact is, if you look at most of the terrorist attacks in recent years, they have been on the London Underground, they have been in Madrid on the trains, they haven't been at airports and they haven't been against passenger aircraft. Nor has this one been against passenger aircraft; they were two passenger aircraft. 'So I have no doubt we will have all the securicrats tut-tutting through the remainder of this week about the need for increased security when in actual fact we already have ludicrously over-the- top and, sadly, totally ineffective security measures. 'You have got to be careful with the terminology. It is not yet sure that they have found two bombs on planes; they seem to have found two printer cartridges on planes which falls a long way short of bomb-making material.' But Government's across the globe remain on high alert as 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 Obamas 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. 'YEMEN MUST NOT BECOME ANOTHER AFGHANISTAN' Britain's role is to 'stay close' and offer Yemen assistance rather than send in troops at this stage, the new head of the UK's Armed Forces said. Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir David Richards said the military's concentration needed to remain on Afghanistan. Global attention has once again been focused on Yemen, the country which spawned Al Qaeda, after it emerged as the source of ink cartridge bombs found on aircraft last week. Asked if an Afghan-style military intervention was the right approach, Gen Richards told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'It might be but right now it is not considered to be the case and clearly the Yemeni government does not believe it needs our help and they are extremely on-side, like most Islamic nations are actually. 'Clearly, the primary agency dealing with this are our intelligence and security agencies. But the military are already helping with their training. 'I don't think we want to open up another front there and nor do the Yemenis want us to do that. So we have to find other ways of doing these things and in the meantime making sure Afghanistan doesn't revert to becoming, if you like, a 'second Yemen' - that is the Army's primary duty at the moment. 'Our role is to remain very close to them, to help them where they most need it and in the meanwhile focus our efforts on Afghanistan and assisting Pakistan to ensure they don't become the threat Yemen is beginning to be. 'When people say Yemen is worse than Afghanistan or Pakistan, one reason is that many of Al Qaeda's leaders and operatives spend most of their time thinking about their own security rather than planning how to attack us.' 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 worlds most wanted men. Other members of Al Qaedas 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 familys 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. 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. Description: Ibrahim Al Asiri: Trained up to 30 disciples Description: Anwar Awlaki: Targeting Britain and the US 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 Qaedas 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. Description: From Saturday's later editions 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. Description: 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 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 A one-time imam and civil engineering graduate in Colorado, Awlakis 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 worlds 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. 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. 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 its 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. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
