This image obtained and provided by ABC News shows Abdulmutallab’s underpants with the explosive used on the failed plot to blow up a Northwest airliner over Detroit on Christmas
Day 2009. (AP Photo/ABC News)
Underwear Bombs:
farewell to the detonator and
the power source
The attempt on Christmas Day 2009 by a 23-year-old Nigerian to blow up
Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam Schipol Airport to Detroit
International has opened up a further chapter in airborne explosives threats.
Some aspects of the incident are posing important and intriguing questions
regarding new methods of evading airport security and carrying a small viable
device on board. Andy Oppenheimer goes in search of the answers.
B
efore and after Umar Farouk that a ‘WMD’ does not have to sive. Its presence in the device alerted
Abdulmutallab was charged be a nuclear, biological or chemical the authorities to the possibility it was
on 7 January with trying to weapon, but is defined according to made by an accomplice. PETN is a
destroy an aircraft “with a weapon of its potential effects. component of the renowned plastic
mass destruction”, questions arose explosive, Semtex – which has long
about the device found on his per- Potentially Lethal Combo: been the favourite explosive of terror-
son and how it might have func- PETN and TATP ists, most notably the IRA, as not only
tioned. What we do know is that, The device, a 15-cm packet sewn into is it very stable and very powerful in
had the Detroit-bound aircraft blown Abdulmutallab’s underpants, is said to small amounts, but older stocks were
up, casualties both airborne and on have contained some 80 grammes of also largely odourless and undetect-
the ground could have exceeded the pentaerythritol - pentaerythritol tet- able by most scanning machines cur-
9/11 toll - hence the WMD charge: ranitrate (PETN), a proven high-explo- rently in service.
40 Register now for FREE instant access to ASI online by visiting
www.asi-mag.com February 2010 Aviationsecurityinternational
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