British Airport security - the rationale

[Jan Klimkowski]

This script even has some of the same actors.

On December 14, 2003, Telegraph hack Con Coughlin was the conduit for the following geopolitical nonsense:

Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam

By Con Coughlin
Published: 12:01AM GMT 14 Dec 2003

Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.

"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.

Abu Nidal, who was responsible for the failed assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London in 1982, was based in Baghdad for more than two decades.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...addam.html

Now Coughlin provides the officially approved Volkland Security analysis for the current farce:

Yemen: the new breeding ground for terror

The explosive devices intercepted en route to the US started their journey in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda’s latest stronghold, reports Con Coughlin.

By Con Coughlin
Published: 10:27PM BST 30 Oct 2010

For an organisation that is supposed to be the poor relation of Osama bin Laden’s terror network, the sheer sophistication of the plot to plant two bombs on cargo planes en route to the US demonstrates that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is rapidly emerging as a major threat to Western security. Not since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, has a terror group sought to smuggle primed explosive devices in the cargo holds of commercial aircraft.

The fact that al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch appears – according to the initial reports, at least – to have been able to plant a number of explosive devices on aircraft whose ultimate destination was the United States is a graphic illustration of the sophisticated techniques it is able to employ in its attempts to wreak havoc on the streets of Western cities.

The main focus of the war against Islamist terrorism is focused on the lawless border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda’s main command structure continues to be based in spite of the massive military operation being undertaken by Nato and Pakistani forces. Senior Western intelligence officials, though, are becoming increasingly concerned about the rapid emergence of the off-shoot organisation that has successfully established itself in Yemen.

Acknowledging the emergence of terror groups based in Yemen as a major threat to Western security, Sir John Sawers, the head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence-gathering operation, last week singled out Anwar

al-Awlaki, the American-born terrorist who is believed to be the head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as posing a grave threat to British security. He described him as a key al-Qaeda leader operating “from his remote base in Yemen”, who “broadcasts propaganda and terrorist instruction in fluent English, over the internet”.

Since the group formed in Yemen in January 2009, it has been responsible for a number of high-profile terror plots, the majority involving the use of the powerful high explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN).

In August 2009, the organisation tried to kill Saudi Arabia’s security chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, when an al-Qaeda bomber managed to trick his way into the prince’s private office to then detonate a bomb made from PETN that had been concealed inside his body.

PETN was again used by the group during their failed bomb attack on a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit last Christmas. On that occasion, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian student who had previously studied mechanical engineering at University College London, tried to ignite a quantity of the explosive that had been hidden in his underpants.

Now it seems the group has used the same explosive on these cargo planes, just as Americans prepare to vote in next week’s mid-term Congressional elections. The device found in the cargo hold of an aircraft at East Midlands airport was so sophisticated that security officials failed to detect it when they conducted their initial search. It was only when they carried out a second examination after another potential bomb had been discovered in Dubai that a further examination revealed explosive material.

“Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is rapidly emerging as a major security threat to rival the traditional al-Qaeda organisation that is based in northern Pakistan,” explained a senior British security official. “Its ability to devise increasingly sophisticated plots to attack Western targets is now a serious concern.”

Following last December’s failed aircraft bombing at Detroit, President Obama launched a massive operation against AQAP. American forces have supported operations by the Yemeni government to root out al-Qaeda terror cells, which have targeted the organisation’s senior leaders and training camps. The Americans have sent advisers and provided intelligence, as well as deploying unmanned drone aircraft and firing cruise missiles at suspected al-Qaeda targets.

In addition, last April, Mr Obama gave his personal authorisation for US forces to kill or capture al-Awlaki, whom the White House believes is the mastermind behind the group’s recent emergence as a major terrorist threat.

But AQAP has proved to be remarkably resilient to this onslaught. Estimates on the group’s membership vary between a hard core of just 50 fighters to a more sizeable organisation of between 200 and 300 terrorists. And, while the Americans have succeeded in killing several key figures in the movement, it has still managed to maintain its campaign of terror.

Since the start of the year, the group has carried out dozens of armed assaults and bombings against military, civilian and diplomatic targets, killing at least 90 people. One senior Yemeni military official said that the government is now fighting a civil war with the militants.

AQAP’s continued ability to strike at will at key targets, though, has been demonstrated by the two attacks it has so far launched this year against the British Embassy. In April, an al-Qaeda suicide bomber almost succeeded in killing Tim Torlot, Britain’s ambassador to Yemen. Earlier this month, Fiona Gibb, the deputy chief of the UK’s embassy, also had a lucky escape when the convoy escorting her to the embassy compound came under attack.

AQAP’s leadership has also managed to sustain its highly effective propaganda activities.

Al-Awlaki continues to broadcast an endless stream of anti-Western vitriol over the internet, including advice on how to make home-made explosives for use in suicide attacks, as well as publishing articles that provide graphic descriptions of how to inflict maximum civilian casualties during a terror attack. One recent article published by al-Awlaki’s organisation bore the title “How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom”.

British security officials are also particularly concerned about the impact al-Awlaki’s radicalisation techniques might have on the estimated 8,000 British Muslims who travel each year to Yemen in pursuit of Islamic studies. “The overwhelming majority of British Muslims who travel to Yemen do so purely for peaceful, religious purposes,” said a senior British security official. “But there is always the risk that, while they are there, they might be susceptible to this kind of jihadist propaganda.”

The fact that AQAP has been able to establish a terrorist stronghold in Yemen is a source of immense frustration to Western intelligence. On one level, the fact that Islamist-inspired terrorists have been forced to relocate to Yemen is a tribute to the success the West has enjoyed in disrupting bin Laden’s terror operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The relentless intelligence-led operations against al-Qaeda’s key leaders have severely limited their ability to undertake a repeat of the September 11 attacks in 2001. As a result, the number of terror plots originating from north Waziristan has fallen from a high of about 90 per cent five years ago to about 50 per cent today.

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have always flourished in the ungoverned regions of failed or failing Islamic states. Bin Laden’s early training camps were established in Khartoum at the height of the Sudanese civil war, and later moved to countries such as Somalia and Afghanistan, where the governments were unable to enforce their will. The same situation exists in Yemen, where the government struggles to impose its writ much beyond Sana’a, the country’s capital.

Al-Qaeda has had an active terrorist presence in Yemen for more than a decade. In 2000, an al-Qaeda cell was responsible for the suicide boat attack on the American warship USS Cole in the port of Aden, which killed 17 US sailors. But the emergence of AQAP can be traced back to February 2006, when 23 suspected al-Qaeda members managed to escape from a prison in Sana’a, including the alleged mastermind of USS Cole attack.

Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, a former personal assistant to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was another escaper . Wuhayshi had joined bin Laden in the late 1990s, and fought with him at Tora Bora before fleeing across the Iranian border.

Wuhayshi was one of the driving forces behind the creation of AQAP. Towards the end of 2008, the group was strengthened by the arrival of scores of Saudi jihadists who had waged a terror campaign to overthrow the Saudi royal family. To Washington’s deep embarrassment, two of the Saudis were former inmates of the controversial Guantanamo detention facility, who had been released at the request of the Saudi government to take part in the Saudi government’s “deradicalisation” programme for militants.

The presence of al-Awlaki, who returned to live permanently in Yemen in 2004 after a spell preaching in radical mosques in Britain, has also been a major factor in the development of AQAP as a major terror organisation. Having spent more than a decade studying in American schools and universities, al-Awlaki’s fluency in English enables the organisation to articulate its message to potential Islamic recruits in both Europe and America.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/t...error.html