There is something both familiar and novel about the terrorist plot outlined yesterday by Scotland Yard and MI5. According to intelligence sources in Britain, the US and Pakistan, the suspects planned to blow up 12 airliners using bombs made of liquids smuggled aboard separately in hand luggage then assembled in the lavatories and detonated with mobile phones.
Some 14 years ago, a similar plot was dreamed up by one Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airplanes flying out of Manila in the Philippines. The devices were to be made of liquid-fuel explosive, mixed and primed aboard the aircraft.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (right) was in the pay of Osama bin Laden and worked with Ramzi Yousef, also on bin Laden's payroll, on the 1993 car bomb attack on the World Trade Centre. He was arrested in Pakistan in the spring of 2003. Before his
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The plan to bring down airliners was dreamed up 14 years ago by al Qaeda. robert fox reports |
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capture he had been deeply involved in the planning and preparation of the New York attack of September 11, 2001. He is now in the US, where he is, as they say, helping the authorities with their enquiries. In fact, he has been singing like the proverbial canary.
The arrest of the 24 suspects in Britain - most of them already under surveillance - and the timely warnings to shut down the airports yesterday seem to have come from a lucky break in Pakistan earlier this week. Agents of the ISI intelligence service arrested two men said to be deeply involved in the alleged plot.
The short-term measure of success is that a devastating attack on transatlantic air traffic has been thwarted. But the episode raises big concerns that governments and their security services must address.
First, the suspects must be delivered up and dealt with by the  |
