Few decisions have irritated the air traveling public more than the mandate to limit the carrying of liquids on airplanes instituted in late 2006. Complaints have raged since then, coming from passengers and pundits alike. The opening of the terrorist trial yesterday in London is sobering.
According to Reuters, here are some of the allegations outlined by lead prosecutor Peter Wright at Woolwich Crown Court in east London.
— A memory stick owned by one of the suspects held detailed information about seven flights from London Heathrow’s Terminal 3 to U.S. and Canadian cities, most of them between August and October 2006.
These were United Airlines services to San Francisco, Chicago and Washington; Air Canada flights to Montreal and Toronto; and American Airlines flights to New York and Chicago.
— There were also conversations suggesting that there may have been up to 18 suicide bombers operating from different terminals, Wright told the court.
— A diary taken from one of the suspects, Abdullah Ahmad Ali, contained what the prosecution said was a blueprint for the plot.
The bombs would have been made from liquid explosives based on hydrogen peroxide mixed with an organic component such as tang, a substance used to make soft drinks.
These were to be smuggled on board the planes in 500 ml bottles of Lucozade or Oasis drinks. The explosive mixture would have been injected into the bottles through the base, so the drinks would appear to be unopened.
The bombs would have been set off using a homemade detonator, a chemical called hexamethylene triperoxide diamine available from household and commercial ingredients, Wright said. This would have been hidden in hollowed-out batteries and fired by a power source such as a disposable camera.
The bombers would carry another open soft drink of a different flavor to fool security, the prosecution said.
The blueprint also suggested the men should carry condoms and a pornographic magazine to convince authorities they were not “radicalized Islamists.”
To say the least, this kind of detail about the bomb plot is harrowing. All of a sudden, the hassle of packing small bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste into quart-sized plastic bags according to TSA rules doesn’t seem so outrageous.
The details mentioned above had not been released until the start of this court case. The very enormity and total lack of any concern for victims is blood-chilling. These are the deviously brilliant but heartless, uncivilized and fanatical terrorists that our government and we are facing.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
