Exploding Terrorists Could Be Latest Airline Threat From al-Qaeda

There's a new type of suicide bomber and this model isn't easy to detect. The latest threat to travelers in Europe and North America are suicide bombers who place the explosives inside their bodies.

Al-Qaeda is using a new ploy in their quest to infuse terror. Using terrorists who are willing to die for their cause, the group is inserting the devices into the bomber's body. France is already planning on widening their examinations to catch the latest breed of terrorist after hearing about an attack in Saudi Arabia reports Times Online. The device was tested by Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, a 23-year-old terrorist, this August at a meeting in Jeddah where Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was attending. Al-Asiri was torn into 70 pieces by the device according to a DCRI report. What's most frightening though is how close al-Asiri was to the prince for over a 24-hour period. He was able to go undetected through several security checkpoints. The device was inserted into his rectum and then triggered by a text message on al-Asiri's cell phone. The Daily Mail reports:

‘While not wanting to be alarmist, I admit this is alarming,’ said Richard Barrett, head of the United Nation’s Al Qaeda and Taliban monitoring group.

‘Even though its capability is reduced, it is clear that Al Qaeda remains determined enough and inventive enough to cause another terrorist spectacular,’ he said at the weekend.

The bomb worked even if no one other than the bomber himself was killed. The device being used has evoked concern that it will be used again in ways that would be devastating, such as on an aircraft. Times Online reports:

“The hardest thing for the terrorists was to make a detonator and a way of setting it off. With advances in miniaturisation, they are getting close,” said Sebastien Mahé, an airport security expert with Brink’s France.

This type of attack has limits in open air meetings but inside a pressurized airplane the results could be catastrophic. At the attack in Saudi Arabia there was a sizable crater left in the concrete floor under al-Asiri's body which was blown in half. The means to detect this type of terrorist are already around but the health risks to many because of the radiation used is thought to be too high a risk for it be be standard. In the future “millimetric wave” scanners which look into into the body without radiation could be used by airports to detect these types of bombs predicts Sebastien Mahé, an airport security expert with Brink’s France.