Namibia alert was & security test - BBC News

19 November 2010 Last updated at 16:00 GMT  Germany raised its terrorist-threat level on Wednesday, saying it had been warned of a suspected attack A suspect package intercepted at a Namibian airport was a dummy used to test security, German officials say.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said officials had established that it was a so-called "real-test suitcase".

He said no explosives were discovered in the case, which was found near luggage about to be loaded on to a Munich-bound flight.

It is not known who left the case at Windhoek airport on Wednesday, triggering an international alarm.

But Namibian police said they would deal "severely" with anyone involved.

"The Namibian police force wants to send out a stern warning to people with ill intentions that it will not allow Namibia to be used as a testing ground by anyone," The force's inspector general, Sebastian Haitota Ndeitunga, said in a statement.

He added that neither the US, German nor Nambian governments were aware of the package.

Examination

The incident came just hours after Germany had raised its terrorist threat level, saying it had received a tip-off from an unspecified country about a suspected attack planned for the end of November.

Mr de Maiziere told a news conference in the northern city of Hamburg on Friday that experts from the German federal police had flown to Windhoek to examine the suitcase.

"The outcome is that the luggage turned out to be a so-called real-test suitcase made by a company in the United States.

"This company is a manufacturer of alarm and detection systems and these real-test suitcases are built to test security measures," he said.

Mr de Maiziere did not say who had left the suitcase, but said German agents were still involved in the investigation.

'Raises questions'

Asked if it could have been a German security test, he said that was "unlikely but part of the investigation".

He added: "The most important thing is that there were no explosives in the bag and there was never any danger to the passengers at any time."

The BBC correspondent in Berlin, Steve Evans, says the minister's statement raises a number of questions, such as, if it was a test done by local officials, why wasn't the true nature of the device revealed immediately?

And, if it was done by a foreign security agency, why didn't they inform the Namibian authorities?

The suitcase was placed alongside baggage about to be loaded on to an Air Berlin plane at the airport near the Namibian capital.

It was seized by Namibian police and an X-ray inspection revealed batteries that were attached with wires to a "detonator" and a ticking clock.

The Air Berlin plane, with around 300 passengers and crew on board, was delayed for six hours before being cleared for take-off to Munich, where it arrived on Thursday morning.

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CNN says Pakistan protecting Osama bin Laden; France on alert for terrorist ... - Christian Science Monitor

Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are living comfortably in northwest Pakistan under the protection of members of the nation's intelligence service, a top NATO official has reportedly told CNN.

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The claim comes amid fresh warnings by Saudi intelligence of terror attacks targeting Europe – especially France – by the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of Mr. bin Laden's group. A British official said Monday that the United Kingdom faces a "very serious threat" of terrorist attacks, reported Agence France-Presse, while the United States and Japan earlier this month both issued travel alerts for Europe.

The latest report could add pressure on Pakistan to eliminate safe havens on its territory for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

CNN quoted an anonymous NATO official saying that the top two leaders of Al Qaeda were living close to each other, but not together, in houses in northwest Pakistan, protected by locals and members of Pakistani intelligence. "Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave," the official told CNN.

The official said the general region where bin Laden is likely to have moved around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley which neighbors Afghanistan's Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the US invasion in 2001....

The area that the official described covers hundreds of square miles of some of the most rugged terrain in Pakistan inhabited by fiercely independent tribes.

Pakistan's interior minister denied Monday that bin Laden and Zawahiri are on Pakistani soil and said such reports had proven false in the past, according to CNN.

But their group, Al Qaeda, has remained active around the world. Saudi intelligence officials have issued fresh warnings of a possible attack in Europe, warnings that will likely add to weeks of jitters triggered by vague reports of possible attacks planned for Europe.

The latest warnings were made public in a radio interview Sunday with French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, who said that "several days" earlier, Saudi intelligence informed France that the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was "active or about to become active in Europe,"
according to Al Jazeera.

"This is not about overestimating the threat or underestimating it," he told France's RTL Radio. "I am indicating, based on all these elements, that the threat is real."

Hortefeux said, in the spirit of "informing, not alarming" the public, that the government had received a warning days earlier from Saudi intelligence about a terrorist threat to "the European continent, especially France," according to Le Figaro. "Our vigilance remains intact," he said, according to Le Figaro.

Hortefeux said the latest alert from Saudi intelligence followed other alerts, including a Sept. 9 Interpol warning, and a Sept. 16 alert warning of attacks by female suicide bombers, according to Le Monde. Hortefeux said an average of two terror plots against France were broken up per year, and 61 people were now in French prisons for involvement in terrorism.

France's current threat level is "reinforced red" (rouge renforce), the second-highest level after "scarlet red" (rouge ecarlate), according to Le Monde.

The Eiffel Tower was evacuated twice in recent months over terror fears. France has issued travel warnings to its citizens for the United Kingdom. The UK on Sunday updated travel advice for France and Germany, saying that there was a "high threat of terrorism" in those countries, "including in public places frequented by expatriates and foreign travelers," according to Agence France-Presse. The UK's threat level is "severe," also its second highest level.

Al Qaeda's Yemen-based offshoot has been reaching out to Muslims based in the Europe and the US with an English-language online magazine that encourages random attacks and instructions on bomb-making and do-it-yourself terror ideas such as welding steel blades onto a pick-up truck and driving into a crowd, according to Agence France-Presse.

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