Sean O’Neill, Rory Watson, Michael Evans, Philip Pank

London, January 02, 2009 – A man was arrested last month when he attempted to board an aircraft in Somalia carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe, in a potential forerunner of the Christmas Day bomb plot.

Somali police said yesterday that they were still holding the man who was arrested by African Union troops at Mogadishu airport on November 13. He was trying to board a Daallo Airlines flight that was bound for the northern Somali city of Hargeysa, then Djibouti before landing in Dubai, which is a hub for international travel.

He tried to bribe his way on to the aircraft after being stopped.

Abdillahi Hassan Barise, a police spokesman in Mogadishu, said: “We don’t know whether he’s linked with al-Qaeda or other foreign organizations but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed.”

Barigye Bahoku, a spokesman for the African Union force, said that the chemicals might have caused an explosion but would not have brought the aircraft down.

The arrest will add to international security concerns that al-Qaeda in Yemen may have ordered a number of sleepers to attempt airline attacks.

It carries echoes of the attempt by Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber”, to blow up an aircraft in December 2001. Reid was stopped by passengers but his accomplice, Saajid Badat, was not arrested until 2004. Badat, from Gloucester, had pulled out of the suicide mission and hidden the explosives in his parents’ home.

The Christmas Day plot failed when the explosive, PETN, hidden in underwear worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab caught fire but failed to detonate on board a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam that was landing in Detroit.

The bomb attempt by Mr Abdulmutallab and the possibility that other would-be bombers are poised to strike have led to heightened airport security around the world.

The Dutch authorities said that they would now require all passengers boarding flights to the US to go through body scanners. They said that they had been trying to install the machines for flights to the US since 2008, but had been blocked by US officials who wanted all passengers screened.

The checks will not be introduced at British airports because the Government is unconvinced that they can successfully detect explosives while scanning a large number of passengers.

“We have no immediate plans to mandate the use of body scanners at UK airports,” a spokesman for the Department for Transport said.

Manchester airport is testing a body scanner that uses radiation to penetrate clothing and detect artificial substances. A four-year trial came to an end at Heathrow in 2008 but its operator has no plans to bring back body scanning.

The 15 scanners at Schiphol airport, where Mr Abdulmutallab boarded his flight, were on trial. The Dutch Government agreed to extend their use, but some aviation experts questioned whether the response was little more than window dressing. “I fear that what we are doing today is to placate the general public rather than have effective security,” Philip Baum, the editor of Aviation Security International, said. “I would say, if we are going to use the technology let’s use the technology that could detect not only what happened on Christmas Day, but what might happen in 2010 or after that.” He said that profiling should be used to determine which passengers should be subjected to specific screening methods.

Guusje Ter Horst, the Dutch Interior Minister, said she hoped that the European Parliament would not use privacy concerns to block widespread use of the scanners. The European Commission is meeting next week to discuss the issue.

At $190,000 (£118,000) each, the machines are more expensive than the metal detectors used to screen passengers and are more bulky.

Mr Abdulmutallab, 23, a former student at University College London, has been charged with attempting to bring down an aircraft and is under guard in an American hospital.

Security sources in Britain said that an investigation was continuing into whom he met and associated with in London. He was president of the Islamic society of the university in 2006-07 and became involved in radical politics, organizing a conference that included a lecture on jihad.

Files from MI5 held no evidence that he was involved in attack planning during his three years in Britain but his name cropped up as “a trace”, indicating that at some point he had associated with extremist elements.

Sources confirmed that although Mr Abdulmutallab was refused entry to Britain this year when he applied to study life coaching at a non-existent college, his name was not added to any security watchlist. He was recorded on a Border Agency database of people to be monitored for future illegal immigration attempts but was not classified as a security risk.

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative chairman of the Commons subcommittee on counter-terrorism, said he was shocked that MI5 had not been informed as a matter of routine that Mr Abdulmutallab had been barred from entering Britain.

“It seems terrible that someone like that who has been put on an immigration watchlist is not included on a security watchlist. There’s clearly a gap here,” he said.

He planned to write to Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, to ensure that people barred from Britain were checked by MI5 and immigration.

Mr Mercer added: “This is a loophole in the Government’s security and immigration policy. There should be one, not two different, systems. It’s an example of a lack of joined-up government.”

Source: The Times, December 31, 2009

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