Standing Well Back
2010-2020

Explosives Protecting Surveillance Devices and Micro IEDs

Interesting development reported here and elsewhere   Basically a covert electronic surveillance device was discovered somehwere ‘interesting” in Iran which seemed to have had a Victim operated explosive penalty integral to it.  Poses interesting theoretical challenges for security staff and potential EOD response needed to a find of a suspected surveillance device.

Reportedly similar devices were discovered over the past couple of years in Lebanon, monitoring phone lines, and an associated explosive incident occurred, but it’s not entirely clear if the explosion in that case was directly integral to the surveillance device or dropped from the sky.

Of course there is a common likely perpertrator in both the Lebanese and Iranian incidents, but the potential threat of an explosive device to reduce the evidence associated with the electronic eavesdropping remains whoever the perpertrator is.

I think there are also some intreresting deeper aspects to this, namely:

a. Is the purpose to deter searchers?

b. Or to destroy sensitive components? – if so what’s so sensitive that it needs destroying?

c. How would your design a surveillance device with an associated explosive payload so that it was certain to destroy the component you are concerned about.

d. What are the EOD implications of such a design.

Seperately, the fascinating accusations that Siemens components sold to Iran had small quantities of explosives (and presumably an initiation system) hidden within them is intruiging. Siemens deny even selling the components. But let’s guess that someone in the West provided a component with hidden micro devices in them for sabotage…. and that’s a fascinating concept.

 

 

20th Century

Oops! Bangkok terrorist plots have been known to fail before.

Today’s incidents in Bangkok have all the hallmarks of a bit of a disaster for the “terrorist” gang concerned. However this is not the first terrorist plot to go horribly wrong in Bangkok,. Back in March 1994 Ramzi Yousef is believed to have been involved in an attempted vehicle bomb attack on the Israeli embassy there.  He and his accomplices rented a truck, (strangling the delivery driver and leaving his dead body in the back of the truck) loaded it with a ton of explosives  and then the designated suicide bomber set off for the target driving the truck with the bomb and the dead body in the back.  On the way to the target, the klutz of a terrorist got involved in a road traffic incident, crashing into a taxi bike and a car at a busy intersection.  The terrorist driving the VBIED panicked … and ran off abandoning the vehicle, bomb and body included.

 

Police responded to the scene of the traffic accident, and without checking the back, took the vehicle to the police vehicle pound…  A week later the vehicle owner called to try and locate his truck … and was led to a very smelly truck in the vehicle pound where the police discovered the putrefying remains of the delivery boy, and a one ton bomb ready to go off at the flick of a switch.  By then Ramzi Yousef and disappeared but he did leave his fingerprints on the bomb.  Yousef, the man behind the first World Trade Center bomb in New York is often described as a terrorist mastermind and genius, but the facts of some of his exploits don’t bear that out. He nearly blew his hand off in an incident in Pakistan when a device functioned and set fire to his bomb making facility accidentally in Manila while planning Operation Bojinka.

20th Century

Bombs in lavatories

The conviction of a team of radical would-be terrorists who discussed planting IEDs in the lavatories of the British Stock Exchange  reminds me that lavatories are a theme in many IED attacks, which I think is curious.  Here’s a range of previous “bombs in the bogs””

Only a couple of days ago some sort of apparent explosive device was found in the lavatory of a Libyan plane in Egypt    For what its worth I don’t think it was an IED but the story is pretty cloudy for now.

In May 2008 there was the very peculiar incident in Exeter, UK, where a decidedly odd individual detonated a device while he was in the lavatories of a fast food restaurant.

In 1957 an elderly man blew himself up in the lavatory of a passenger aircraft over California. A good investigation report is here    The device was constructed by dynamite and blasting caps with the blasting caps initiated by matches and burning paper.  Only the perpetrator was killed.

A similar dynamite IED functioned in the lavatory of an aircraft in 1962 over Iowa, this time killing all aboard. http://www.airsafe.com/plane-crash/western-airlines-flight-39-1957.pdf

A Canadian passenger aircraft  blew up after a device exploded in the lavatory over British Colombia in 1965. The crime was never solved.

In 1939, as part of a significant Irish terrorist bombing campaign in England a bomb was planted in a public lavatory in Oxford street. Disaster was averted when the lavatory attendant dumped the IED in a  bucket of water (not a good response, but a brave man).  Several other incidents in this campaign were IEDs left in lavatories. The attendant was awarded £5 for his bravery

In 1884, during another Irish bombing campaign in England, (yes there have been a few) the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, Scotland Yard, was severely damaged in an explosion caused by a large IED being left in a public lavatory next door to the police Headquarters.  Here’s a picture.

There’s an interesting aspect to this story. Several months earlier, in 1883, an Irish revolutionary organization , the Irish Republican Brotherhood sent a letter to Scotland Yard  threatening to ‘blow Superintendent Williamson off his stool’ and dynamite all the public buildings in London on 30 May 1884. The Met Police largely ignored the warning, and then on the very day promised the explosion at Scotland Yard occurred, as did two other explosions elsewhere in London.  The failure of the Met Police to protect their own headquarters, as well as the occurrence of several other IED attacks across London embarrassed the police severely and led indirectly to the formation of Special Branch.

There are numerous other IED attacks on lavatories, too many to list.

VBIED

Hezbollah threat – vbied?

I see things stirring in Thailand where US authorities have warned of an imminent terrorist attack. It appears this may be Hezbollah linked. Is this evolving threat an Iranian response to recent events, like the recent nuclear physicist assassination? Rather than close the Hormuz straits will they use a Hezbollah proxy to hit back at the west? Operational deniability, but strategic and political effect. It’s unlikely to be just Thailand. If it happens their MO would be a vbied. Hold on to your hats.

2010-2020

The media and terrorist bomb making

There’s an interesting NPR article here about how the media report bomb making details.  The general thrust is that the genie is already out of the bottle and if a terrorist wants to make a bomb he doesn’t require education or prompting from press reporting to be able to make the final step.  As readers of this blog will know I don’t hold the press in high regard anyway for reporting useful facts in this domain!  (Note the comment from the CNN expert who clearly doesn’t know the difference between a fuel component in an explosive and an “accelerant” component in an incendiary.)   In general I would hope the point that making the public more aware of precursors is working – several recent cases have been reported to the police to start with by retailers of fertiliser or Hydrogen Peroxide who were suspicious of people buying the material from them.

Despite that I’m still a little amazed that in incidents such as the Glasgow airport incident and the Times Square effort that well educated terrorists mounted an attack with large devices that were never going to “detonate” in a million years. Wishful thinking gets you a long way but not far enough. It indicates strongly that these were lone wolf attacks without the training and  resources of an effective terrorist organisation behind them… which is good.  There is another argument though… from a terrorist’s perspective both attacks “succeeded” in terms of raising awareness of their cause…..Discusss…

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