Richard Reid, who attempted to destroy Flight 63 from Paris to Miami last week but was overpowered by passengers and crew, apparently was not acting alone.
American officials have described the explosive devices hidden in the shoes of airline passenger Reid as very sophisticated. CNN reports that the explosive material itself was identified as 10 ounces of PETN-based explosive, a highly sensitive explosive that could be set off even by heat or friction. A U.S. official said that "It would have taken a high level of intelligence and know-how to construct this type of bomb". The complicated nature of the explosive, and Richard Reid's limited education and abilities, have lead US authorities to believe that Reid was not the person who prepared the explosive shoes, and that a master-terrorist may be behind him.
Richard Reid apparently did not posses the knowledge or expertise to put together scuh a delicate and sophisticated bomb. Rather, he simply had a British passport and a willingness to sacrifice himself, blowing up a passenger airplane high over the ocean and taking countless lives with him. Reid, born in Britain in 1973 to a Jamaican father and an English mother, apparently discovered Islam when he was serving a jail sentence in a British prison. After his release from prison in 1995, he joined the Brixton mosque. It was while attending the mosque that he was apparently recruited by radicals. Reid eventually left the mosque and traveled to Pakistan, and was subsequently apprehended when he tried to blow up the trans-Atlantic passenger jet.
There is, however, one problem with the American conspiracy theory no-one can yet resolve. Had Richard Reid succeeded in setting off his explosives, the airplane would most likely have broken up in the air high above the Atlantic Ocean, with no opportunity to signal what had taken place. With authorities clueless about the location of the crash, the remains of the destroyed airplane would likely have vanished without a trace to the bottom of the ocean, and no one would have ever found out of Reid’s crime. Terror attacks have always taken media coverage into account as a key element, so the rationale of a terrorist mastermind sending Reid off to an attack that would have gone down in history as an accident or a mystery is highly debatable. (www.albawaba.com)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
