NEFA "Target America" Report on the Transatlantic Liquid Bomb Plot
By Evan Kohlmann
Concurrent with the start of the trial of eight alleged conspirators in the United Kingdom, the NEFA Foundation has released the fifteenth installment in its "Target: America" series, examining the 2006 plot to detonate liquid explosives on board several commercial aircraft departing from Britain and bound for the United States and Canada. Cell members reportedly planned to bring the liquid explosives onto planes in factory-sealed sports drink bottles modified with false bottoms. When announcing the plot’s disruption, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police, commented, "this was a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder." And British Home Secretary John Reid stated, "had this plot been carried out, the loss of life to innocent civilians would have been on an unprecedented scale."