Yemen yesterday announced a crackdown on cargo shipments after two US-bound bomb parcels were sent from the country, as an alleged Saudi bombmaker emerged as a key suspect in the failed package plot.
State news agency Saba said Yemen’s national committee for civil aviation security has decided “to implement exceptional security measures on all cargo leaving Yemeni airports to ensure the safety of civil aviation.”
It has also decided to tighten general security at all Yemeni airports to counter “methods used by terror organisations”, Saba said.
Qatar Airways said on Sunday that a package containing explosives was flown from Sanaa to Doha and then on to Dubai on one of its aircraft. A source said on condition of anonymity that the plane was a passenger flight.
The bomb had PETN hidden inside a computer printer with a circuit board and mobile phone SIM card attached, security officials in Dubai said.
The other parcel which British Prime Minister David Cameron said appeared designed to blow up a plane was found at East Midlands airport in central England and apparently travelled through Cologne in Germany.
Yesterday, Germany decided to step up its emergency measures and extend a ban on air freight from Yemen to also cover passenger flights which originated in the Arabian peninsula country.
“German air authorities have orders to turn back all direct and indirect flights from Yemen. That means that for the time being there will be no flights to or over German territory allowed,” a transport ministry spokesman said.
Shortly after the discovery of the bombs, Britain banned all freight from Yemen from coming into the country, including in transit. On Saturday, France took similar measures to suspend air freight from Yemen.
A female medical student detained in Sanaa on Saturday after being tracked down through a mobile number written on the explosives-filled packages was released the next day, her father said.
But a senior Yemeni security official said that only one parcel had been sent by a woman who “impersonated” Hanan al-Samawi and put the student’s phone number on the receipt. The second package was sent by a man, he added.
A Yemeni official said Ms Samawi, 22, was freed on condition she present herself for further questioning if required.
Yemeni authorities also arrested more suspects on Monday while they released an unspecified number of employees from the Sanaa offices of FedEx and UPS – the courier firms reportedly used for the parcels – a security official said.
A US official in Washington, meanwhile, said Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, a 28-year-old alleged al-Qaeda bombmaker, had emerged as the “leading suspect” in the parcel bomb plot uncovered late on Thursday.
“Al-Asiri’s past activities and explosives’ experience make him a leading suspect,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The militant, thought to be hiding in Yemen, is wanted for a string of high-profile attacks linked to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based branch of Osama bin Laden’s network.
“There are indications he may have had a role in past AQAP plots, including the attempted assassination of a Saudi official and last year’s failed Christmas Day attack,” the official said.
Asiri figures on most-wanted terror lists in both Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
In August 2009, he sent a 23-year-old younger brother on a suicide mission, with 100 grams of PETN under his white Saudi robe, to kill Saudi intelligence chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was wounded but survived.
US officials have said the parcel bombs intercepted in Dubai and Britain were addressed to synagogues in Chicago.
The head of Britain’s armed forces General Sir David Richards told the BBC yesterday that Yemen must not become a new Afghanistan, while playing down the prospect of military action against the country.
“It mustn’t become so... I don’t think we want to open up another front there and nor do the Yemenis want us to do that.”
In September, Britain warned of “massive dangers” to world security should Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country and increasing a stronghold of al Qaeda, become a failed state.