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SUNDAY DECEMBER 30 2001
The shoe bomber: Israel’s secret game of tag with terror Briton
DAVID LEPPARD
IT took an alert El Al security guard seconds to see that Richard
Reid betrayed the tell-tale signs of a terrorist suspect. With his
long flowing hair and strikingly large frame, he stood out among the
business passengers and tourists at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport as
he arrived for the El Al flight to Tel Aviv last July.
Reid was taken aside for questioning. He was not Jewish and was
travelling alone on a ticket bought with cash. He was unable to
explain what he planned to do in Israel.
The El Al security boss decided not to let him fly to Tel Aviv. But
officers at Shin Bet, the internal Israeli security service,
overruled him. The spy agency wanted to follow him to establish who
he was meeting. An armed sky marshal sat near Reid on the flight. For
the next five days his movements throughout Israel were monitored.
However, details of Israeli concerns that Reid was a security risk were not passed on
to British, French or American officials. Experts say that if they had been it is
unlikely that he would have been allowed on any aircr
aft. Last weekend the British-born Reid was arrested in America after allegedly trying
to blow up an American Airlines jet over the Atlantic.
Reid later told the FBI that it was while going through the El Al security checks that
he first realised he could get a bomb on board a plane hidden in his shoes. The
Schiphol guards had removed his trainers and x-rayed t
hem for explosives — a routine not carried out by any other airline.
Investigators are still trying to establish whether Reid’s Israel trip can be
connected to what happened over the Atlantic last weekend. A theoretical link was
revealed last week by an FBI agent at Reid’s court hearing in
Boston. The agent said the explosive he used was TATP — the same as that employed by
many Middle Eastern terror groups. Israeli intelligence has linked it to Hamas, the
suicide-bombing group.
Reid’s visit to Israel was only part of his recent travels. Those trips hold the key
to the puzzle occupying investigators: was he an aimless drifter with an obsessive
desire to martyr himself for Islam, or a key member o
f Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network whose mission was to initiate a second wave of
terror after the September 11 attacks? The bizarre nature of the plot and its
incompetent execution suggest the former. But the cash purc
hase of expensive flight tickets and explosives and the design of the shoe bomb
indicate accomplices and organisation of some kind. American intelligence sources are
beginning to conclude that there are strong indications
that Reid was a member of Al-Qaeda.
His travels certainly point to countries with a strong Al-Qaeda connection. After
Israel he went to Egypt, then to Turkey, then he spent a few days in Peshawar in
Pakistan. There, on his own account, he tried unsuccessful
ly to cross the border into Afghanistan.
He returned to Amsterdam and went to Brussels to get a new British passport to replace
his existing one, which had an Afghan visa in it. He then returned to Amsterdam to buy
explosives.
Reid claims to have acted alone. He says he arranged to buy a small parcel of
explosives after contacting a right-wing group on the internet. He says he handed over
£1,100 to a man in a park in exchange for the explosives
. Later he caught a train to Paris, where he paid £290 in cash for a ticket on an
American Airlines flight to Miami.
At Charles de Gaulle airport, ICTS, the security firm that screens passengers for
American Airlines, singled him out again as suspicious, this time because he was
travelling alone with only a small carry-on bag. He was qu
estioned and stayed overnight at a hotel near the airport.
The following day police allowed Reid on to American Airlines flight 63. There was no
system in place to detect the explosives hidden in his black suede basketball
trainers. When the plane was 3Å hours out over the Atlant
ic, Reid is alleged to have tried to light a detonating cord protruding from a hole
drilled into the toecap of his shoe.
After a scuffle in which Reid bit a stewardess’s hand, passengers and crew wrestled
him to the floor, tied him up and sedated him. The plane was diverted to Boston, where
Reid was arrested and charged with assaulting a me
mber of the flight crew.
Forensic experts say there was enough TATP in Reid’s shoe to puncture the Boeing 767’s
fuselage, potentially depressurising and destroying it and the 197 passengers and crew
on board.
Reid’s outlandish effort, in full view of the other passengers, was described as
“cack-handed” by a British intelligence official. He said the early evidence pointed
to Reid being a loner. But other officials say the mone
y he used to buy the explosives and pay for his travels must point to a different
conclusion. They also say the construction of the shoe bombs would have required at
least some help from an explosives expert.
The FBI is giving serious consideration to links with Al-Qaeda. It is possible that
Reid may have been used by his masters either for a dummy run to test airline security
or to maintain pressure on western security agenci
es and to keep up the sense of fear among passengers and officials.
The FBI is trying to confirm reports that he was identified by captured Al- Qaeda
fighters as having attended Khalden, a training camp in Afghanistan. It was even
reported last night that exasperated American intelligence
officers were pressing for Reid to be given a controversial truth drug.
One agent accused him of “playing games” and said a drug might have to be used to get
important information on possible future terrorist acts.
Scotland Yard is examining Reid’s links with radical Muslim clerics and their
associates in London.
Reid, 28, was born in Bromley, south London. His father Robin was a small-time
Jamaican criminal. His mother Lesley is English. They separated when Reid was four.
Reid went to live with his aunt Madeline while attending T
homas Tallis school in Kidbrooke, southeast London.
Soon after leaving school Reid fell into a life of petty crime. A string of muggings
led to two spells in Feltham young offenders’ institution, a notorious jail for
“thugs”. It was there in the early 1990s that he convert
ed to Islam.
The combination of an aimless life and broken family relations led Reid to Islam,
according to his aunt. “He found his life so empty,” she said. “He was so lonely that
he found solace with his Muslim brothers.”
His first experiences of Muslim life were in Brixton, where a moderate Salafi mosque
holds its services in English in a two-storey house opposite the police station.
Abu Zakaria, a trustee of the mosque, said Reid’s visits had begun innocently. “At
first he was quiet and quite a nice, pleasant guy. He would just come in, pray and
then leave,” he said.
Abdul Hakk Baker, the mosque’s chairman, said: “By the end of 1998 he was asking
questions such as: what was our view on terrorism and suicide bombing? Was (the West)
a place of war? We said, ‘No, suicide bombing is not a
cceptable’.”
As his views became more extreme, Reid — by this time calling himself Abdul Rahim —
grew a beard, began wearing Muslim dress and fell in with a group of extremists who
met at Brixton town hall.
On a couple of occasions there were scuffles after members of the group tried to force
their way into the mosque.Baker and Zakaria passed on their concerns to the police.
But the targeting continued. “People like Abu Hamz
a, Abu Qatada and Abdullah El-Faisal would send their students and they would try and
recruit people,” Zakaria said.
El-Faisal, a charismatic preacher of West Indian origin, left the mosque in the
mid-1990s to teach at a school in north London. In 1997 Reid began mixing with radical
Muslims who were advocates of El-Faisal’s teaching.
El-Faisal last week denied knowing Reid. He declined to condemn suicide bombings,
although he emphasised that he did not support attacks on civilians. There is no
suggestion that he supports terrorism, but Scotland Yard i
s said to be examining possible links between some of his followers and Reid. The FBI
says he is one of several radical clerics whose preachings give cause for concern.
“There are any number of clerics up there in north London who have been activists in a
radical way for some time. You can almost name your poison as to who Reid has been
talking to,” said one agent.
Investigators say it is too early to link Reid directly to Zacarias Moussaoui, who is
charged in America in connection with the September 11 plot. Moussaoui lived in
Brixton before going to America last year to learn to f
ly commercial aircraft. Some reports suggest Reid was with Moussaoui at a terrorist
camp in Afghanistan and that there are records of telephone calls between the two men.
With more than 4,000 Muslims in British jails and 130 imams employed to service them,
Reid’s apparent recruitment in prison has caused considerable anxiety.
Last night Imam Abduljalil Sajid, a member of the National Council for the Welfare of
Muslim Prisoners, said: “Time is getting short and things are getting out of hand,
with undesirable imams still getting into prisons.”
Whatever Reid’s links to Al-Qaeda, the real fear among western security agencies is
that his antics last weekend could herald a wave of similar attacks.
To add to worries about how vulnerable the skies might be to someone imitating Reid,
it has also emerged that airports in Europe are failing to check passengers’ documents
properly and are allowing bags on to flights with
out their owners, despite the apparent tightening of security since September 11.
Reporters travelling on the Continent have found lapses in security at airports in
Germany and Belgium and at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, Reid’s departure point.
One reporter flew into Frankfurt airport from Kazakhstan on December 12 during a
security alert. Customs officials questioned him over suspicions that he was carrying
excess caviar. Despite his protests that his bag had g
one on the plane ahead of him, they kept him back and he missed a connecting flight to
Milan.
German border police, who control security at Frankfurt airport, said it was “normal
procedure” to allow bags to travel on flights unattended. Kazakhstan was considered to
have the same levels of security as a European ai
rport and therefore they were confident that proper checks would have been made on the
bag.
In 1988 Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie killing 270 people after a bomb
hidden in a suitcase was put on the flight at Frankfurt airport without its owner.
Another reporter took a flight from Paris to San Francisco on United Airlines at the
beginning of December. A strike by police meant passport control at Charles de Gaulle
was inundated and the lone officer was waving thro
ugh passengers with European Union passports.
Another reporter flying from Charleroi airport, Belgium, to Venice had neither her
passport nor her boarding card checked.Further loopholes have been identified in a
report by EU transport ministers. Earlier this month th
ey found it was not compulsory to screen every piece of hold luggage in the 15 member
states.
Comprehensive baggage screening throughout Europe will not be in place until the end
of 2002. In addition, some airports have not yet introduced “security restricted
areas” which stop passengers being passed weapons.
Measures approved by the ministers to improve security, including restricted areas,
must come into force by the end of February. Other precautions include background
security checks on all airport and airline staff and ro
utine x-ray screening of aircrew.
Following Reid’s alleged attempted shoe bombing, transatlantic travellers setting off
from Holland and Spain are having their shoes scanned, but in Britain only suspicious
passengers are being targeted.
Security experts are sceptical that Reid’s shoe bomb would have been found without a
thorough examination of the shoe itself. However, scanners are undergoing trials that
can detect explosives by using either low-level ra
diation or chemical analysis of air blown gently past passengers.
The government has approved tests of a hand-held Millimetre Wave image scanner
designed by QinetiQ, its former defence research arm, which uses radiation in the
atmosphere to see through clothes and detect explosives.
However, in a sign that the high levels of alert in the immediate aftermath of
September 11 have eased, Britain’s leading transatlantic airlines have dropped plans
to improve security on flights with armed sky marshals.
Virgin Atlantic said: “We are not intending to put sky marshals on our flights;
instead we intend to concentrate on preventing terrorists getting on board.”
British Airways said it had dropped the idea after serious concerns were raised over
the introduction of firearms on flights and the need for the government to introduce
legislation to allow this to happen.
Experts were not surprised by the airlines’ decision, despite the role of a sky
marshal in first tracking Reid’s flight to Israel. Chris Yates, aviation security
editor at Jane’s Transport, said: “Security is about discov
ering holes and plugging them before the terrorists spot them. Although holes are
spotted, some airlines do not address them because of cost.”
The question now is whether any security measures would be sufficient to thwart those
determined to break them, of whom there could be many. Zakaria said: “A lot of people
who were with Reid (in Brixton) have disappeared.
We don’t know where they have gone. It’s worrying.”
Additional reporting: Jonathon Carr-Brown; Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv,
Tony Allen-Mills in Washington, Adam Nathan and Edin Hamzic in
London; Philip Pangalos, Peter Semler, Susan Bell and Martin Jay
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.
End<{{{
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