Nigerian underwear bomber: 10 terror suspects held

[darrels joy]

Nigerian underwear bomber: 10 terror suspects held


2010/01/28

KUALA LUMPUR: Police last week acted quickly to forestall a serious threat to national security when they nabbed 10 terror suspects with links to international terrorist organisations.


The nine foreigners and a Malaysian were also believed to be linked to a Nigerian student who attempted to blow up a US-bound flight on Christmas Day.

Among the foreigners nabbed here were several Nigerians but the authorities are tight-lipped over the details.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the nine foreigners had only just arrived here when they were nabbed.

“They would not have had time to do much and establish themselves here,” Hishammuddin said.

“They posed a serious security threat to the country and have been detained under the ISA (Internal Security Act).”


He, however, refused to reveal the nationalities of the foreign suspects and organisation they were affiliated to.

He said police were tipped off by international anti-terrorism agencies and swung into action.

He said terrorist threats were a serious matter regardless of whether they were directed at Malaysia.

He rubbished reports claiming there were 50 people arrested under the ISA last week and that 38 of them were released the following day.

“This is not true. We were working with other international anti-terrorism agencies and nabbed the 10 suspects who are on the international wanted list.”

The New Straits Times learnt that the 10 suspects were members of a religious group linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, the Nigerian who was arrested in the United States after he attempted to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear on board Northwest Airlines flight 253, which was bound for Detroit from Amsterdam.

It was learnt that foreign anti-terrorism agencies informed Malaysian authorities that the 10 were linked to Abdulmutallab and that they were in Malaysia.

Authorities are tight-lipped about the arrests, including what they were doing in Malaysia and what status they adopted in entering the country.



Abdulmutallab was charged on Dec 26 in the United States with two counts of attempting to blow up and placing a destructive device on a US bound flight.

Additional charges were added, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder of 289 passengers and crew of the flight.

He is being held at a federal prison awaiting further trial. Upon conviction, he will face a life sentence plus 90 years in prison.

Intelligence officials have reported that Abdulmutallab had met radical ulama Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen and that he was trained for the attack by the Yemen-based branch of al-Qaeda.

It was reported that Mutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, had approached US and Nigerian authorities to warn them about his son’s radical views weeks before the alleged attempt to destroy the flight to Detroit.

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/N...cle/index_html

[revwardoc]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8547329.stm

A test explosion on a Boeing 747 has shown that a US Christmas Day flight would have landed safely even if a bomb on board was detonated successfully.

The plane's fuselage did not break in the controlled blast, which used the same explosives that were on Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.

However experts said it showed the suspected bomber and the passenger next to him would have been killed.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, has denied attempting to murder 289 people.

The controlled experiment was carried out for the BBC Two documentary How safe are our Skies? Detroit Flight 253.

Dr John Wyatt, an international terrorism and explosives adviser to the UN, replicated the conditions on board the Detroit flight on a decommissioned Boeing 747 at an aircraft graveyard in Gloucestershire, England.

The same amount of the explosive pentaerythritol (or PETN) allegedly carried by Mr Abdulmutallab was placed to mirror the location where he was sitting on the plane.

Captain J Joseph, an air accident investigator, and Dr Wyatt both concluded that the quantity of explosive used was nowhere near enough needed to rupture the skin of a passenger plane.

Dr Wyatt said: "If it was a more rigid material then we might have seen a crack or breakthrough but this is actually quite a flexible material.

"I was extremely impressed by the aircraft structure.

"It can sustain quite a hefty thump."

Captain Joseph said: "We noticed the aircraft had lost some rivets but no flight controls were compromised and certainly no fuel tanks were breached.

"I'm very confident that the flight crew could have taken this aeroplane without any incident at all and get it on the ground safely."

However, the experts said that the death of the suspected bomber and the passenger sitting next to him would have been traumatic for passengers.

"It would have been quite horrific. Obviously the blast itself would cause eardrum rupture," said Dr Wyatt.

Captain Joseph said the noise and the smoke would have been awful, "not to mention the parts of the bodies that were disintegrated as part of the explosion".

But Captain Joseph said the experiment could help to put air travellers at ease: "I think this should be a confidence-builder for passengers.

"After seeing... how well the aircraft maintained its structural integrity, and obviously the pilot's capacity to fly the aircraft, it should give them a great deal of confidence."

For security reasons, they could not go into specific details of blast damage inside the cabin of the test Boeing 747.

Kip Hawley, the former head of the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said: "We can be sure that al Qaeda and others have taken lessons from their failed attempt and this program allows the public to be privy to some of those lessons.

"An active and engaged public can not only be a layer of security but can be more effective in demanding the kind of security that will work.

"The explosives analysis done by Dr John Wyatt gave a realistic picture of the effects of a carry-on bomb roughly similar to the one used on Christmas Day.

"The point that today's airframes are more resilient than many imagine is a critical point.

"Governments do very sophisticated testing similar to what Dr Wyatt demonstrated and those results inform security measures you see in airports today.

"Specifically, it was that kind of testing that led to the decision to allow 100ml of any liquid, carried in a sealed one-quart baggie, to be brought through security."

Dr Wyatt's test results are to be shared with governments and aviation security experts around the world.
__________________________________________________ ____________

Link has video of the test

__________________________________________________ ____________

This is great, though. Let the terrorists know that they'll need more explosives next time. Sheesh!