TERRORISM West Midlands Police
A burnt note detailing how to make a homemade IED.
Al-Qaeda active in Mali.
VIRAL
across continents and the possibility of CBRN use A door-handle poisoning precedent was reported in the
US in 2011, when Carol Bond, having discovered that her close friend was pregnant by her husband, sprinkled caustic substances on the woman’s mailbox, car-door handle and door knobs, causing burns. Rather than being tried under a common federal criminal law, the defendant was prosecuted under a federal statute designed to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Spreading to Africa The attack by al-Qaeda-affi liated militants who stormed the remote Ain Amenas desert natural gas complex in Algeria in January and took hostages threatened to blow up the entire complex. Algerian troops fi nally ended the crisis with a ground assault with 37 hostages, and 29 militants killed. Had the terrorists carried out their threat to blow up the plant, however, a hazmat event of vast proportions would have occurred. And retaliation threats have begun. In late January in an
interview with the Associated Press in Cairo, Mohammed al-Zawahri, the younger brother of the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri and a highly infl uential jihadi leader in Egypt, endorsed violence against the West in retaliation for the French-led military intervention in Mali, saying that the US and Europe are “making jihadists” and that “all Muslims have the right to stop this [French] aggression by any means.” News emerged in February that Algeria is facing a further IED threat from terrorists using glass bottle bombs fi lled with poison, causing a slow lingering death for the victims. The hostage-taking attack has meant companies have
to consider increasing security – including moving from unarmed to armed operations – aſt er largely ignoring the risks of operating in the remote desert region. It has also raised concerns about the vulnerability of uranium mines in Niger. Changes in security in the oil industry followed a hostage-taking incident in Saudi Arabia in 2004 at oil industry compounds at
Khobar when 22 were killed. The spread of al-Qaeda into Africa,
most notably by AQIM (al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb), has been a long time coming and there is little sign that the doctrine of jihadism will wane in the coming years. A Jihad was declared over the Middle East and Africa following France’s intervention in Mali. AQ continues to operate and launch attacks in Kenya and the Somali-based terrorist organization al-Shabaab has increased attacks within the country and in surrounding countries. AQIM has made signifi cant gains in Mali and with other Islamist groups took control of northern Mali in early 2012, and aims to hit ‘hardened’ US diplomatic and military facilities as well as ‘soſt ’ civilian targets, such as American citizens working in North Africa and the many thousands of citizens of those countries. Small arms and light weapons (SALW) currently present a far more serious threat in Africa than NBC proliferation but among CBRN facilities that could be vulnerable to attack or infi ltration, the Kenya Medical Research Institute and the Uganda Virus Research Institute house the Ebola virus and Bacillus anthracis. In November 2011, US Senator Richard Lugar and Pentagon offi cials visited the laboratories and others in Burundi, Kenya, and Uganda, and identifi ed several security concerns posing a “bioterrorism risk.” In the DRC in 1997 eight fuel rods
CBNW 2013/02 21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100