A month before a Nigerian man whom US intelligence suspected of terrorist ties tried to blow up a Detroit-bound jetliner, Indonesian authorities successfully used a US watch list to pick out an arriving passenger.
The arrest of Filipino Abdul Basir Latip is an example of effective counterterrorism intelligence-sharing at a time when the aviation community is examining security failures that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a plane with explosives-laden underwear.
US President Barack Obama has ordered new terror watch list guidelines in the wake of the attempted attack — though Abdulmutallab was in an intelligence database, he was not on a no-fly list — but analysts say such lists are only one small part of successful counterterrorism. Information-sharing and proper analysis of data is key.
“Lists are valuable in making sure governments around the world are able to track individuals,” said John Harrison, an aviation security specialist. “But you don’t want to put too much emphasis on these lists. It’s an overstatement to say: ‘OK, now we are safe.”’
While lists are a valuable intelligence tool, they cannot be solely relied upon to prevent terrorists from boarding flights, Harrison said. Even though Abdulmutallab, 23, was not on a watch list, his behavior should have triggered alarms that would have led to his capture anyway, he said.
Abdulmutallab apparently bought his ticket in cash, was flying the same day, had no check-in luggage and purchased a one way fare.
Together, those details should have tripped a standard international security procedure, Computer Assisted Passenger Screening or CAPS, Harrison said.
US officials have said at least part of their failure to stop Abdulmutallab was because they had not put all the puzzle pieces together.
Alain Chouet, former chief of the security intelligence service at France’s counterintelligence agency, DGSE, estimates that roughly 600,000 names provided by national authorities are circulating on lists worldwide.
But he says the way those names are gathered is faulty. He estimated such lists are only 10 percent reliable.
“These are idiotic lists,” he said, adding some people are blacklisted based on anonymous accusations. “We don’t know how these lists are made.”
In the Philippines, most of the approximately 100 people on a watch list have been charged with or sought by authorities in connection with previous violent crimes. In Indonesia, the names include hundreds of convicts, known associates of terrorists and individuals identified by intelligence agencies as suspicious.
Latip was wanted for alleged involvement in the 1993 kidnapping of a Christian missionary by Abu Sayyaf militants who had eluded capture for years, Ric Diaz, a senior Philippine counterterrorism official said.
The Indonesians were acting on a tip from Interpol, which was sharing information from a US watch list, when they nabbed him on Nov. 21 at Soekarno-Hatta international airport with the help of photographs provided by the FBI.
This coordination is key to successful security, analysts said, more than the watch lists themselves.
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