Yemen bomb disarmed with only 17 minutes to spare

November 4, 2010

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Agence France-Presse · Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010

PARIS — An Al-Qaeda bomb intercepted in Britain last week part way between Yemen

and the United States was disarmed just 17 minutes before it was programmed to

detonate, French officials said Thursday.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said that one of two parcel bombs found last

Thursday at airports in Dubai and Britain was close to exploding, and officials

in his office told AFP he was referring to the British package.

" There were parcel bombs from Yemen heading for the United States, and I can

tell you, for example, that one of these parcels was disarmed 17 minutes before

the planned explosion, " Mr. Hortefeux told France 2 television.

He made the remark during a more general discussion of the threat of militant

attacks on France and was not pressed for more information. He did not say what

was the source of his information about the imminent blast.

The British interior ministry and London's Metropolitan Police said they would

not comment on operational matters.

Packages addressed to synagogues in Chicago and holding the hard-to-detect

explosive PETN hidden in ink toner cartridges were uncovered in Dubai and

Britain's East Midlands Airport last week, sparking a global security alert.

Washington believes the parcel bombs were the work of Saudi militant Ibrahim

Hassan al-Asiri, a suspected Al-Qaeda bombmaker, and British officials have said

they were powerful enough to bring down a plane in flight.

The British government has announced an urgent review of air freight security in

the wake of the plot. It has also ordered the suspension of all air freight from

Yemen and unaccompanied air freight from Somalia.

Britain's interior minister Theresa May said in a speech on Wednesday that the

bomb was " deeply concealed " in a printer cartridge and connected to a hidden

power source in sections of a mobile telephone.

" The specifics of this attack -- notably the type of device and how it was

concealed -- were new to us, " but the principle was similar to the device that

destroyed a Pan Am jumbo flight over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, she said.

" It could have destroyed the aircraft on which it was being carried, over the

UK, over the US or on the ground, " she said.

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