Yemen Searches for Bomb Plot Suspects - Voice of America

VOA News 31 October 2010

Investigators are seen with a United Parcel Service jet near the company's facility at Philadelphia International Airport, Friday, Oct. 29, 2010.

As authorities in Yemen search for those behind the plot to air mail bombs to the United States,  U.S. and British officials are examining ways to increase the screening of air freight and guard against future terrorist threats.

The Obama administration's counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, says "we have to presume" there might be more bombs on cargo aircraft.  Brennan told a television interviewer on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the United States is trying "to get a better handle of what else might be out there."  

He noted that all cargo flights from Yemen have been suspended.

Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May says the British government is looking at the screening of air freight after one of the bombs sent from Yemen was discovered at a regional airport. May, in an interview with BBC television,echoed concerns expressed by Brennan that the terrorist threat remains a constant.

In Yemen, government security agents have been conducting searches across the capital, Sana'a, and questioning cargo workers at airports.  Twenty-six suspected packages have been seized during the searches.

A young woman has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in sending the two explosive packages from Yemen last week that were addressed to Jewish places of worship in the U.S. midwestern city of Chicago.  A lawyer for the woman, engineering student Hanan al-Samawi, says she has no ties to terrorist groups and may have been tricked.    

Al-Samawi's mother has also been detained.

U.S. officials say the bombing plot has "all the hallmarks of al-Qaida."  Brennan in another television interview said forensic analysis indicates the bomb-maker in this plot also made the devices involved in the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner last December.

The bomb-maker, identified Ibrahim Hasan al-Asiri of al-Qaida's Yemen branch, is also suspected of making the bomb that attempted to blow up Saudi Arabia's deputy interior minister, Prince Mohammed ben Naif, also in 2009. the plot.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

View the original article here