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TERRORISM


West Midlands Police


Irfan Naseer and Irfan Khalid at Birmingham Airport.


West Midlands Police


Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Rahin Ahmed in airport car park.


al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb. GOING Andy Oppenheimer looks at the inexorable spread of terrorism


Amidst the plethora of IED suicide, vehicle-borne, combined gun-and-bomb and hostage-taking incidents taking place almost daily, it hardly seems necessary for a terrorist group with mass-casualty aims to develop and deploy CBRN. This may be put down more, however, to lack of capability and their comparative ready access to IED materials and their easy means of deployment, than lack of intent regarding CBRN.


T 20 CBNW 2013/02


he continued spread of al-Qaeda and its affi liates in many regions of the world, and other jihadi groups inspired by its doctrine, is set to continue with security and intelligence services mindful of possible CBRN proliferation and infi ltration by


these groups, especially in or from areas of confl ict – with subsequent enhanced threat to civilian safety. And military and civilian response planners must prepare for the worst.


“Revenge for everything” On 21 February three British-born, al-Qaeda-connected men based in Birmingham, UK, who aimed to surpass the 7 July and 9/11 atrocities, were convicted in a London court on 12 counts of terrorism. As well as planning to detonate up to eight bombs in rucksacks on suicide missions in crowded places – and possibly detonate IEDs on timers to kill, among others, British soldiers – Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid, and Ashik Ali also raised money for their planned attacks under cover of a Muslim charity. The most signifi cant terror plot to be uncovered since


the 2006 ‘liquid explosives plot’, which intended to blow up transatlantic airliners with sophisticated IEDs disguised as soſt drinks, the group were inspired by US-born AQ cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. They expressed hatred of “Western” society and pledged “revenge for everything.” Naseer – the chemist


and bombmaker of the group – and Khalid had received AQ training in between 2009 and 2011 in Pakistan, like many others before them. Clearly what the training omitted – and which was the hallmark of Provisional IRA instruction, especially for the bombmakers – was not to be visible, nor to openly discuss plans, nor to express political views. Naseer demonstrated to his


co-defendants how to make IEDs by extracting material from cold packs (ammonium nitrate is contained in small amounts). Although there is no evidence the group were planning to use improvised chemical devices (ICDs), the Birmingham group criticised the London 7/7 bombers for not causing enough carnage, and their Pakistan training had included learning about ‘poisons’ as well as bomb-making and fi rearms. In surveillance recordings Naseer was heard discussing the mixing of poison into creams such as Nivea and smearing them on car handles to cause 1,000 deaths.


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