Arrests Made in Connection to Yemen Plot
The Washington Post reports:
Investigators examining explosives found in packages intercepted in Britain and Dubai suspect the material, preliminarily identified as PETN, points not only to the role of an al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen but to a sophisticated bomb-maker who last year sent his brother to his death in an effort to kill a Saudi prince.
Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, a 28-year-old Saudi national who is on that country's most-wanted list, secreted a PETN-based bomb in a body cavity of his younger brother, Abdullah, who pretended to be turning himself in. The bomb killed his brother and wounded Mohammed bin Nayef, a top counterterrorism official and Saudi royal.
Asiri, who is based in Yemen, is also believed to have built the underwear bomb that a Nigerian man trained in Yemen attempted to detonate last Christmas Day on a commercial aircraft approaching Detroit. That device also contained PETN, or pentaerythritol trinitrate.
"He is certainly someone we are focused on," a U.S. official said of Asiri.
Both packages were shipped from Yemen, where officials said Saturday that they had arrested a woman suspected of mailing them.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told reporters in the capital, Sanaa, that the United States and the United Arab Emirates had provided information that helped identify the woman, who was arrested at her home in Sanaa.
Yemeni officials told the Reuters news agency that the woman, who was not named, is a medical student in her 20s.
A British minister said Saturday that the bomb, found in a package destined for a Chicago synagogue, was "viable," and could have exploded and brought down the UPS plane that was carrying it.
