A foiled plot to bomb US-bound air planes in Britain bears a striking resemblance to a murderous plan hatched in the Philippines more than a decade ago and uncovered just days before a visit of late Pope John Paul II in 1995.
The 1995 plot, dubbed "Project Bojinka" or "Oplan Bojinka," would have been the first large-scale terrorist attack against commercial passenger air planes using "liquid bombs."
It targeted 11 US-bound airlines that had stopovers in East and Southeast Asia. It was to have been carried out from Jan. 21 to Jan. 22, 1995.
The plot was planned in Manila starting December 1994 by Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and associates Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah.
It was, however, foiled when Murad was arrested in January 1995 after a fire broke out in their rented apartment in downtown Manila, which the three militants had turned into a clandestine bomb factory.
Murad returned to the apartment to retrieve various items left behind, including Yousef's laptop computer and diskettes containing details of Bojinka, but police were already swarming the area and he was caught.
Yousef was arrested in Pakistan one month later, turned over to US custody and was sentenced to life without parole. Shah was caught in Malaysia in December 1995.
According to police, the plan was to use "liquid bombs" made from nitroglycerin to attack the targeted air planes. Digital watches would have been used as timers, 9-volt batteries as power source and light bulb filaments as detonators.
Yousef allegedly tested the plan on Dec. 11, 1994 on a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Narita, Japan, with a stopover in the central city of Cebu. He smuggled the nitroglycerin on board by putting it inside a contact lens solution bottle.
After planting the bomb inside the life jacket under a seat of the Boeing 747, Yousef disembarked in Cebu.
A Japanese businessman was killed and 10 other passengers were injured when the bomb exploded inflight. But the plane was able to make an emergency landing in Okinawa.
With the successful test, Yousef planned the attack for 11 flights on US carriers Northwest Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Airlines from various parts of Asia. All flights had a stopover to allow the bombers to disembark after planting the explosives.
The bombers did not need US visas to implement the plot as they only booked through to the stopover destination.
China’s first fully artificial intelligence (AI)-generated feature film opened in cinemas yesterday in what promised to be a tough box-office test for the country’s booming tech industry as advance ticket sales lag. More than 10,000 screenings of the sci-fi thriller Sanxingdui: Future Past were scheduled yesterday, according to ticketing platform Maoyan. However, public reception has been less than enthusiastic. Presale revenue as of yesterday morning was 80,000 yuan (US$11,992), while total box-office takings were forecast to remain below 150,000 yuan, only a fraction of the reported production cost, Maoyan said. Ticket prices range from 20 to 90 yuan, bringing the number sold to a
A STEP UP: The moving of small military positions forward should be taken seriously amid the North’s recent demonstrations of its firepower, an analyst said North Korea has moved new units into “firing positions,” the sister of leader Kim Jong-un said yesterday, days after Pyongyang warned it was considering deploying additional strike means to its border with South Korea. Tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang have soared since the South last month blamed an explosion inside the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two countries on landmines laid by North Korea, an accusation it has rejected. “Our military leadership underlined the need to make those rogues aware that our new firepower units have taken their firing positions,” state media cited Kim Yo-jong as saying. Her statement came a
Thousands of British and French troops have taken part in a military training exercise that included one of Britain’s largest airborne operations in two decades, the British government said yesterday. The war game is designed to show how NATO countries could be defended against a modern-day attack and comes during fears about Russian aggression in Europe amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine. About 2,500 troops were involved in the seven-week exercise, in which 600 British and French paratroopers dropped from four RAF A400M Atlas transport aircraft over Germany. The exercise called Rhino Titan, held at the Sennelager military training center in
WARNING: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to strike US bases across the Middle East if the US continues to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz A late-night attack on Saudi Arabia’s Dammam airport killed two people and injured eight others, the civil aviation authority said on yesterday, a day after Washington ordered nonessential US embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia, as the kingdom comes under sustained deadly attacks by Yemen’s Houthis. A Saudi Arabian and an Indian man were killed in the attack on Wednesday, the Saudi Arabian General Authority of Civil Aviation said in a statement. Damage to the airport was being assessed, it added. In the past few weeks, Houthi attacks on Saudi oil and civilian infrastructure have reached an unprecedented scale, forcing
RSS