Look for bomber, not just bomb: US agency

NEW DELHI: A day after US President Barack Obama described the audacious attempt by Nigerian youth Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to take down a Detroit-bound plane with a PETN bomb sewn into his underpants as a “systemic failure”, an American global intelligence company has said that Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) would continue to try attack US targets with new designs and innovation.

“The attack’s failure means the bomb maker will have to think up a new design and will continue trying to attack the US targets assuming he is still alive after recent attacks on AQAP in Yemen. This means security efforts must focus on looking for the bomber, not just on looking for bombs,” Stratfor said in its latest report.

Counter-terrorism sources and media reports suggest IED was comprised of a main charge of 2.8 ounces of PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate). “Since Abdulmutallab was the only operative dispatched with such a device on Christmas eve, the operation probably was a proof-of-concept mission, similar to the bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434 by Abdul Basit on December 11, 1994, or the shoe bombing attempt by Richard Reid on December 23, 2001.”

It said had Abdulmutallab’s attempt destroyed the aircraft, it could have taken months or even years for the authorities to determine the type of device used, as was the case with Pan Am Flight 103. “As seen with the mysterious crash of Air France Flight 447 on June 1, 2009, determining what caused an aircraft to break up in flight is difficult,” it said. If Abdulmutallab’s attack was a trial run, it is likely that other attacks with that type of device would have been conducted had it succeeded. Like Reid’s failed shoe bomb attack, however, the failure of Abdulmutallab’s device has alerted the authorities to this specific method of hiding the IED and has likely sent the bomb-maker back to the drawing board to find a more reliable design and another method of concealment, Stratfor said.

The global intelligence company noted that it is quite possible that the people who trained and dispatched him and perhaps even the person who manufactured the IED he carried were killed or captured in the recent two operations against the Al Qaeda in Yemen. “If the bomb-maker is still alive and at liberty, however, he will most likely be forced to come up with a new design,” Stratfor said. “This particular bomb-maker is likely the same innovative and imaginative individual responsible for the IED used in the August 28 attack against Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi deputy interior minister, and we can expect him to continue to design creative IEDs. The device used in the attack against the prince was made in Yemen, used a main charge of PETN, and was hidden in the attacker’s crotch or rectum.”