Tag Archives: Terrorism

The Explosives

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The Times has just posted the following:

“Police believe that explosives used in the London bomb attacks may have been homemade and of a type that has been a hallmark of al-Qaeda operations, as the death toll from the July 7 atrocity rose to 54.

Forensic detectives believe that a flat in Leeds was used as a bomb factory to convert acetone peroxide, or triacetone triperoxide (TATP), made from chemicals bought over the counter, into a potent explosive. The mixture is so volatile that it is nicknamed Mother of Satan.

This is the same type of explosive that Richard Reid had in his shoes when he attempted to blow up a Transatlantic flight in 2001, and the Gloucester shoebomber Sajid Badat who decided not to go through with his mission. The discovery provides the strongest link yet between the perpetrators of the bombings and al-Qaeda.”

This explains all the interest in “the chemist“.

Blowing The Mole?

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This doesn’t look like it’s going to be a good week for GWB, with the Valerie Plame affair far from resolved, some blog attention is now moving back to the issues raised at the time of the arrest of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan (any connection with Mohammed Barbar?) in the Pakistan more or less exactly a year ago.

Juan Cole has picked up a story initially explored by John Aravosis at AmericaBlog. There are a lot of twists and turns in the story, but it does appear that excessive eagerness to catch the headlines around the time of the Democratic Convention may have inadvertently set off a chain reaction that finally exploded itself in London last Thursday. The suggestion is that when Noor Khan’s name broke in the press, the British police were forced to acted in haste, and that Muhammad Sadique Khan, one of the July 7 bombers, was apparently connected – by a telephone link – to one of the people under surveillance. If this is the case, this would explain Sarkozy’s behaviour at the EU Interior Minister’s summit on Wednesday.

As the IHT article shows, the London bombing was a complex operation, and plenty of details are still unclear. I wouldn’t rule out a Spanish connection at this stage, not in the least:

“Spain has also begun to confront Pakistani-born radicals operating there since the terrorist train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004.

After 10 Pakistanis were arrested in September on suspicion of belonging to an Islamic radical support network, the Spanish police discovered a video showing details of a number of buildings in Barcelona.

In November, two more Pakistanis were arrested, and in April, 11 suspects were indicted on terrorism charges.

No direct link has been established between the Barcelona plot and the London bombings, a senior Spanish official said. But the official added that there was every possibility some members of cell were still at large and that Spain and British were pooling their information on the London bombing investigation.”

Update: this piece gives some of the background at the Pakistan end.

Suspects Update

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Well the Times seems to have the main scoop today. As suggested in my post on suicide bombers yesterday, it is important that they have been identified, but much of the ‘upstream work’ may not be so immediately productive. Police do seem to have a lead from the CCTV images at Luton in that there is apparently a fifth man identified there (which suggests that the station may have been more than a convenient rendez-vous). This ‘fifth man’ would seem to be additional to the ‘mastermind’ and the ‘chemist’. The ‘mastermind is – according to the Times – a Pakistani national, who entered and left the UK before the bombings took place. The ‘chemist’ is alleged to be Egyptian-born chemistry lecturer (or biochemistry PhD according to who you read) Magdi El-Nashar who is is “understood to have rented one of the Leeds addresses where explosives were found”. He is now reported to be back in Egypt. (Egypt rings a bell, since Juan Cole’s lexical analysis of the initial claim from a group calling itself ‘Secret Organisation of al-Qaeda Jihad in Europe’ suggested that the author of the text might be of Egyptian origin). The idea that this group might be the ‘intellectual authors’ of the bombing is given some credence by the ‘burning cross’ theory. (This supposes that the bus-bomber in fact wanted to board the Northern Line). The original claim statement said “Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern and western quarters.”

Obviously much of the above is still at the conjecture stage, but it does suggest a fairly complex network behind the four suicide bombers, and it also suggests that there is much more relevant information to come before we will get anything like a full picture.

BTW: if you are having trouble with our comments facility, worry not, you are not alone. We are working to try and fix it even while you read.

Suicide Bombers

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Well a consensus seems to have been reached that some at least of the bombers were ‘suicides’ (the probability seems to be that they all were). So what do we know about suicide bombing? Well reading around I came across this document from the Rand Corporation which contains a chapter from terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman entitled “Defending America Against Suicide Terrorism” which seems quite to the point. This paragraph seems especially prescient about ‘Why is suicide bombing so attractive to terrorists?’.

“To answer these questions, we conducted extensive research and interviews with foreign police/security forces with prior experience with suicide terrorism. The following conclusions emerged.

First, from a tactical standpoint, suicide attacks are attractive to terrorists because they are inexpensive and effective?with an extremely favorable per-casualty cost benefit for the terrorists. Moreover, they are less complicated and compromising than other lethal operations. No escape plan is needed because, if successful, there will be no assailant to capture and interrogate. Suicide attacks are perhaps the ultimate ?smart bombs.? They can cleverly
employ disguise and deception and effect last-minute changes in timing, access, and choice of target. Finally, suicide attacks guarantee media coverage. They offer the irresistible combination of savagery and bloodshed.”

And for those who are interested in points from the ‘oh why do we keep making the same mistakes department’ this (pdf) file from Hoffman on Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in Iraq (written in June 2004, but still largely valid) makes an interesting read.

Italy Remains On Red Alert

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The danger that Italy could be the next country to be attacked is certainly being taken very seriously there. Corriera della Sera leads with “Blitz antiterrorismo in tutta Italia” (which I imagine I don’t need to translate). For english language readers AFP are carrying this story:

Italian police were carrying out a country-wide anti-terrorism operation early Wednesday, a day after the government announced a series of measures aimed at preventing a London-style attack, the ANSA news agency reported.

Hundreds of police and paramilitary Carabinieri officers were searching homes and buildings in several cities in northern Italy as well as in the southern port of Naples and on the island of Sicily, the agency said.

Just returning briefly to the economic implications of terrorism, I want to re-iterate that stock market reactions form only part of the picture, there is also a ‘real economy’ to think about, and here consumer confidence will be important. What will be the impact in the UK of the fact they were suicide bombers (for example). The jury is still out, and will be till late autumn at the earliest. Italy is another case in point. An attack now might well have serious economic consequences, indeed even the threat of one (which is where we are now) complicates the economic picture significantly.

Update 20:15 CET

The Italian Interior Minister has announced that 174 people have been arrested.

There’s been an arrest

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AFP

The investigation quite early led us to have concerns about the movement and activities of four men, three of whom came from the West Yorkshire area,” said the head of the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist squad, Peter Clarke.

“We are trying to establish their movements in the run-up to last week’s attack and specifically to establish whether they all died in the explosions,” Clarke told reporters.

He added that it was “very likely” that one of the suspects was among those who died in one of the bombed Underground trains, near Aldgate station in east London.

Clarke said the “complex and intensive” investigation was “moving at great speed”, following raids on six premises in the industrial city of Leeds, in northern England, home to a large Muslim population of south Asian origin.

He said a man — identity and age not revealed — was arrested in West Yorkshire, the county that includes Leeds, and that he was being transferred to London for questioning.

Closer to the capital Tuesday, police sealed off a train station and parking lot in Luton, a town north of London, and carried out controlled explosions on a car with suspected links to the attacks.

More Details Emerge

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Sky continue to maintain their original claim that there were four bombers, and that they are all dead. This has not had direct police confirmation. But sky do provide a lot more details. One of the most important of these is that images of the four were captured by CCTV cameras at Kings Cross. There may be some doubt about the fourth of the bombers because the police inform that three come from the Yorkshire area, but say nothing about the fourth.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke explains:
Continue reading →

Developments Update

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Sky is now reporting that all four bombers who attacked trains and a bus in London on Thursday died in the attacks, and that all four were British citizens. (This also implies that we now know there were 4 of them).

The Times has this in its article:

And a 21-year-old local man, speaking at the scene near Colwyn Road, claimed that a group of his friends who are all young British-born Pakistani men in their early twenties had already been arrested today.

The man, who did not wish to give his name, said: ?They?re all normal lads, very, very top lads they are. Police are just doing this for no reason. They don?t know what they are doing at the end of the day. This is a load of nonsense.?

It looks as if Metropolitan Police Chief John Stevens speculation might have been reasonably accurate, at least as far as the actual people who placed the bombs is concerned. Of course even if all this is confirmed there are still very many outsanding question, in particular about the origins of those military grade explosives and the operational logistics planning.

A Worrying Incident

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David posted last Friday about fears and fear. News has come in this afternoon that a Pakistani man – Kamal Raza Butt – was killed on Sunday in Nottingham. The crime – for which six youths are now in custody – was clearly not (in strict legal terms) directly related to the bombings (since there is no insinuation that Kamal Butt was in any way involved), but it is being investigated by police as a racially-aggravated incident, and in that sense it indirectly is connected. Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, talks of a growing backlash and cites a series of incidents were mosques have been attacked. It is highly likely that organised political groups are behind some of this, in which case it is also imperative that they are identified and made to desist.

Developments

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UK police said this morning they searched five homes in northern England. They described the search as forming a “significant” part of the investigation into last week’s London bombings. I think it’s useless speculating at this stage what this might mean. I also think it is important that the police are seen to be pro-active in the investigation, public confidence in the security services is an important part of the present picture. I will update this post during the day as the need arises.

Update 11:50 CET

Incidentally, a piece of terminology: saying ‘no arrests have been made” doesn’t have any deep significance in British parlance, since people may be ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ prior to being arrested and formally charged (or not). (This is presumeably even more complicated under the various terrorism acts which I am not especially familiar with). The issue is sufficiently serious to have evacuated part of the area. The raids were in Leeds.

Update 15:15 CET

Police have just announced that they carried out a controlled explosion to gain entry to a home in the Burley area of Leeds, justy a few miles away from Beeston where the original raid took place.

Update 16:00 CET

It has now been revealed that troops from the bomb disposal unit were involved in controlled explosion. The context is one of an Asian district of Leeds. This has implications but we shouldn’t yet jump to conclusions. The Times has fuller details:

“More than 500 people were evacuated from surrounding homes, businesses and the local mosque prior to the detonation at just after 1.30pm.

Armed police immediately surrounded the flat in Hyde Park Road, Burley .

The explosion came six hours after five other homes in Colwyn Road, Tempest Road and Shalford Street in the mainly Asian suburb of Beeston, three miles south-east of Burley, were sealed off following a series of dawn raids.

Neighbours of one of the addresses reported that a 22-year-old man who lived there with his family had been missing since Thursday.”

OK, let me make one reasonable conjecture based on the info we have so far. The raid in Leeds is based on forensics of the remains found on around the bus. This could have been one of the people who planted the bombs. If this is the case – and the Times certainly also leads us in the direction – one part of the story may be about to become clearer.

Update 17:15 CET

My conjceture has now been confirmed. Sky are now reporting that a decapitated head found near the scene of the bus bomb had been that of the bomber. Forensic tests then led police to carry out raids in Leeds, and to a car at Luton railway station north of London. This also seems to add strength to the Kings Cross meetup hypothesis (see below in comments). Sky are also claiming that there have been arrests.