MANILA, Philippines - Most of us have not had Yemen on our personal radar system until this past year, when it emerged as a global hub for terrorism. The latest chilling near-miss reported from there was a bomb scare involving US aircraft. A telephone call from the Saudi Arabian chief of intelligence to US counter-terrorism official John Brennan set off a search for bombs planted in US cargo planes in Yemen. It was a real thriller - the planes were already airborne when they were intercepted and they landed in Dubai and London. A search of their cargo revealed a small, but lethal amount of explosives cleverly hidden inside the ink cartridges of computer printers. They were addressed to synagogues in Chicago. Ninety-six percent of air cargo is not screened. But screening may not have picked up this well-hidden explosive material, nor would sniffer dogs likely have got the scent of the explosive hidden inside the ink cartridges. The packages had been delivered to a Fedex and a UPS office in Yemen by a young woman. A woman whose name matched the records was picked up in Yemen, only to be released after it was proven that she was a victim of Identity Theft. (Watch your credit cards and other identification. I once was a victim of Identity Theft when someone got my banking account number and tried to withdraw money.)
Examiners in London thought the explosives were designed to explode when the American planes were airborne, or perhaps as they landed in the US. The packages were located in cargo sheds, before being loaded onto their forward flights to the US. They were only hours away from being detonated when they were found as a result of the tip. The accuracy of the tip and the prompt inter-agency teamwork saved the day. The perpetrators were thought to be Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the branch of Al-Qaeda that was founded in Yemen. As Tom Ridge, the former US Secretary of Homeland Security, commented in a TV interview "Globalization gives terrorists an edge. The whole world is accessible." Both the Fedex and UPS offices in Sana, the capital of Yemen, have been closed.
