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February 4, 2010

Next Terrorist threat: exploding breast implants (seriously)

from G2

 

By Gordon Thomas LONDON – Agents for Britain's MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives. Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up. Similar surgery has been performed on male suicide bombers. In their cases, the explosives are inserted in the appendix area or in a buttock. Both are parts of the body that diabetics use to inject themselves with their prescribed drugs. The discovery of these methods was made after the London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner on Christmas Day with explosives he had stuffed inside his underpants. Hours after he had failed, GCHQ – Britain's worldwide eavesdropping "spy in the sky" agency – began to pick up "chatter" emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants. A hand-picked team was appointed by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, to investigate the threat. He described it as "one that can circumvent our defense." Top surgeons who work in the National Health Service confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants. In a report to Evans, one said: "Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines. You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray. Given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet, and would be a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot it with the usual body scanner." Explosive experts at Britain's Porton Down biological and chemical warfare research center told MI5 that a sachet containing as little as five ounces of PETN when activated would blow "a considerable hole" in an airline's skin which would guarantee it would crash. Other scientists at the research center on Salisbury Plain confirmed that a suicide bomber posing as a diabetic could detonate the sachet implanted in his or her body. A doctor at a London teaching hospital who had advised the Security Service added: "As long as a bomber has the paperwork confirming he is a diabetic and must carry his injection syringe with him all the time on a long flight, there is every chance he will be allowed to pass security after he is checked. Obtaining the paperwork is easy. Every day this hospital has headed paper stolen by its staff for all sorts of reasons. Forging the name of a consultant is easy. The only way to be certain that the bomber is a genuine diabetic would be to call the hospital. I can't imagine security at a busy airport like Heathrow taking that much time. And the chances were that even if a call was made to a hospital the doctor wouldn't be available." Instead of containing medicine for diabetics, the syringe would contain the liquid to activate the explosive in the sachet. All the bomber would have to do is to go to the aircraft toilet like Abdulmutallab did on Christmas Day and inject himself to pierce the sachet and there would be an instant explosion. So far MI5 agents have established that as many as 50 Muslim doctors with the required surgical skills have returned to Pakistan and Yemen in the past two years. "When you add that number to doctors who went to local medical schools in those countries you begin to see the extent of the threat these human bombs pose," said an intelligence source in London. While the Home Office, the political master of MI5 said, "we never comment on security threats," the chairman of the Commons Counter-Terrorism Sub-Committee, MP Patrick Mercer, said: "Our enemies are constantly evolving their techniques to try to defeat our methods of detection. These body bombs are one of the most frightening methods and we must take this into urgent account." GCHQ agents have focused their satellite surveillance of the mountains in the north of Yemen after the latest "chatter" on Arab websites indicated that the surgically enhanced bombers are hiding in an al-Qaida base waiting for their surgery to heal before they are sent out into the world. Gordon Thomas is the author of the newly published, "Secret Wars: One Hundred Years Of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6."

Posted by Martin at February 4, 2010 1:19 PM

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