Intelligence

The Times: Airports get dirty bomb detectors

November 23, 2003
David Leppard

DETECTORS designed to prevent a terrorist “dirty bomb” from being smuggled into Britain are to be installed at main airports.

Ministers are drawing on a special £330m security fund to help pay for the sophisticated “yellow box” machines at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and all major provincial airports by 2005.

The network of airport detectors is part of Operation Cyclamen, a national strategy to shield Britain from Al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups.

Detectors have already been installed on a trial basis at some seaports, including Felixstowe. The metal screeners are large enough for a lorry to pass through.

Nadine Smith, a spokeswoman for Customs and Excise, which is co-ordinating the policy with the Home Office, said: “The coverage will be partly fixed at seaports and airports and partly mobile, with special squads responding to alerts anywhere in the country.”

Dirty bombs — small amounts of toxic or radiological material wrapped inside a large quantity of conventional explosive — are thought unlikely to cause mass casualties, but they could contaminate large urban areas, sparking panic and chaos.

Intelligence chiefs fear an attack using a dirty bomb concealed in a container ship driven into a British port. They have also recently warned that suicide terrorists could use a cargo plane packed with explosives.

Even before last week’s bombings of British targets in Istanbul, the assessment of the threat to Britain from Al-Qaeda was as high as at any time since the September 11 attacks on America in 2001.

Ministers were warned by intelligence chiefs 10 days ago that a big Al-Qaeda operation was in the pipeline. MI5’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, a 60-strong team of intelligence officers at the agency’s London headquarters, had learnt that suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists were on the move. Terrorist “chatter” — monitored by the GCHQ eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham — had increased.

Across the country police and security services were told of the prospects of an attack against “UK assets”. Nobody knew where or when it would happen, but it was widely expected to coincide with President George Bush’s visit. MI5 formally raised the threat level from “significant” to “severe general”, the second highest alert.

Both MI5 and MI6 have greatly increased their targeting of Al-Qaeda suspects in the past two years, and intelligence has improved. Last month another Al-Qaeda suspect was arrested in Britain after reports assessed the man as a “significant” threat. The foreign national is the 16th suspect held without trial under emergency anti-terror laws.

In a separate development authorities confirmed yesterday that a plot to buy half a ton of toxic chemical that could have been used to try to kill many thousands was foiled last year.

The approach to purchase a huge amount of saponin, used to help the transmission of molecules through cell membranes, was made last autumn to Amersham Biosciences. Suspicions were aroused because the amount involved was 1,000 times the size of a usual order and came from an Islamic-funded company with a London post office box address.

Experts suspect a mass poisoning plot using a mixture of saponin with ricin or a similar agent, though whether the components could have been successfully mixed has been questioned by scientists.

November 23, 2003 at 10:46 PM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home