Managing the Explosives

This is one of the speeches I gave at a United Nations conference held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2005.

Terrorists, warring factions, and saboteurs use chemicals commonly found in communities in industrialized nations to create improvised explosives, incendiaries, and chemical agents. Common chemicals may be used because standard military chemical agents may be difficult or dangerous to manufacture, access, or disperse.

The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist attack on April 19, 1995 aimed at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, a U.S. government office complex in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The attack claimed 168 lives and left over 800 injured. Within days after the bombing, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were both arrested for their roles in the bombing. McVeigh was later executed and Nichols was sentenced to life in prison. What is frightening about that case is that on September 30, 1995, they purchased a ton of ammonium nitrate for their bomb from a farm co-op in McPherson, Kansas. On October 18, they purchased another ton of fertilizer. On October 30th, McVeigh, disguised as a biker, bought $2,775 worth of nitromethane racing fuel for the bomb at a Texas track which he later mixed with the ammonium nitrate. No-one thought that the purchases were out of the ordinary.

In June of 2006, a Canadian counter-terrorism investigation led to the arrests of 17 people accused of plotting terrorist bombings in Ontario. The Canadian home-grown terrorists who changed their names into Muslim names purchased large quantities of Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer. Charged are: Fahim Ahmad, 21, Zakaria Amara, 20, Asad Ansari, 21, Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mohammed Dirie, 22, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Jahmaal James, 23, Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Steven Vikash Chand, 25, and Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21. Didn’t the sellers of that kind of fertilizer think it was odd that they wanted to buy such a large quantity of Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer? Had they forgotten that the same kind of fertilizer was used in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on Oklahoma City 12 years earlier?

After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, I was deeply concerned as to how easy it was for these two terrorists in Oklahoma to get access to ammonium nitrate (a fertilizer) and the racing fuel in such a large quantity. This prompted me to write a paper on the subject, titled, ‘Managing the Explosives’. In 2005, I was invited by the United Nations to present my paper to the Eleventh U.N. Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Criminal Justice being held in Bangkok, Thailand.

In my paper, I suggested that businesses that manufacture and or store such explosive material should take greater care as to whom they are selling this stuff in bulk to. I listed a number of chemicals that are easily obtainable in bulk that can be used in the manufacture of explosives. There are a great many of them. Here are just a few.

White Phosphorus The amazing thing about White Phosphorus is that it is used in almost every product imaginable – from soft drinks to toothpaste. White phosphorus is used by industries to produce phosphoric acid and other chemicals for use in fertilizers, food additives, and cleaning compounds. Small amounts of white phosphorus were used in the past in pesticides and is still used in fireworks. WP is a colorless to yellow translucent wax-like substance with a pungent, garlic-like smell. The form used by the military is highly energetic (active) and ignites once it is exposed to oxygen. White phosphorus is a pyrophoric material, that is, it is spontaneously flammable).

Nitric Acid This chemical is a clear liquid and it is highly volatile because it is a powerful oxidizing agent. Amongst other purposes, it is used for the making of Amonium Nitrate. It is also used in making explosives.

Hydrogen Peroxide It is a very pale blue liquid which appears colourless in a dilute solution, slightly more viscous than water. It is a weak acid. It has strong oxidizing properties. The London suicide bombers (August 2005) cooked up their explosives using hydrogen peroxide, suggesting that these terrorists went to a hardware store or some beauty supply store for the ingredients.

The explosive used by the July 21, 2006 London bombers was extremely powerful and could have killed as much as or more than was killed in London the year before. The mix of hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour, along with its TATP detonator, had a similar explosive strength to Gelignite and TNT. The bombs could have exploded at around 6km/sec, sending lethal shrapnel travelling at hundreds of metres a second. Omar Khyam, one of five British Muslim members of an al-Qaeda gang who were associates of the July 2006 plot said that they intended to blow up a nightclub, shopping centres and utilities with homemade fertilizer bombs.

In September 2007, a terrorist group in Germany had amassed 680 kg (1,500 pounds) of hydrogen peroxide to make bombs that would have been among the biggest yet on German soil. The suspects had acquired 12 large barrels and filled them with a 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution. Possible scenarios would have been car bombings used in simultaneous attacks. Officials said the hydrogen peroxide --- was the same chemical used in the London transport bombs that killed 52 people and four terrorists in 2005. They could have produced a bomb with the explosive power of 540 kg of TNT. This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings.

Liquids often are used in so-called binary bombs where two substances are mixed together and then ignited by a blasting cap or other type of detonator.

In my paper, I suggested that the first major step to prevent terrorists from obtaining explosive chemicals is that the sale of such chemicals must be better regulated. I suggested that the selling of a ton of Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer to a man dressed in a business suit who says his first name is Mohammed should raise some serious doubts as to why he wants that kind of fertilizer, especially when he wants it loaded onto a rental truck.

Didn’t anyone at the firm or firms that sell Hydrogen Peroxid to the public make any initial enquiries as to who these terrorists were employed by and then check out their employers for authenticity?

Two Quebec men in their 20s, were arrested in 1007 for the theft of 19 kilos of dynamite. An employee of a construction firm that was doing construction work nearby hid the explosives in the woods and the two young men came across the dynamite and stole them.

A major problem facing mining companies and oil companies is what to do with explosives that they no longer wish to use because of their age. There is an invention patented that provides an explosive charge that includes a casing containing explosive material, a cap coupled to the casing, and fungal spores that, when activated, metabolizes and degrades the explosive material so that it will nop longer explode. The fungal spores may be located in the ullage of the casing, contained in a biodegradable cap, or encapsulated in biodegradable pellets that are mixed into the explosive material. A wicking strip and/or deliquescent salts may be used to draw moisture into the charge in order to activate the fungal spores, and supporting nutrients may be added to help support fungal metabolism. In one embodiment, the casing also has a biodegradable plug that allows moisture into the casing to support fungal growth. The casing itself may also be biodegradable.

When it came to plotting mass murder, Dhiren Barot was meticulous. The 34-year-old Al Qaeda operative, sentenced to life in prison on November 7, 2006 showed a chilling aptitude for detail while plotting bomb attacks on both sides of the Atlantic. From the ingredients and costs for a massive gas cylinder attack or a radioactive "dirty bomb" to the location of executive offices and support pillars in targeted buildings, Barot outlined them all in manuals that run for 207 pages. He wrote in his manual that he proposed buying 10,000 smoke detectors, piling them on top of an explosive device and detonating it in central London, Spain or the U.S. to "maximize on terror and chaos." He estimates that 500 people would suffer long-term radiation illnesses. With each smoke detector costing about $10, Barot calculates the cost of the attack at $140,000, including the renting of storage space for the detectors.

The explosives used by the alleged July 21, 2006 London bombers was so powerful it would have far more than those killed in the London bombings. Khyam and his gang were jailed for life for attempting to cause death, loss of limbs or serious internal injuries. The mix of hydrogen peroxide and chapatti flour, along with its TATP detonator, had a similar explosive strength to gelignite and TNT. The bombs could have exploded at around 6km/sec, sending lethal shrapnel travelling at hundreds of metres a second. Omar Khyam, one of five British Muslim members of an al-Qaeda gang who were associates of the July life for plotting to blow up a nightclub, shopping centres and utilities with homemade fertilizer bombs.

If we want to prevent terrorists from having access to the kind of chemical ingredients that they use for the making of explosives, the sellers and manufacturers should be very careful as to who they sell the chemicals to, especially when it is being sold in bulk.

In my paper, I also suggested that certain inert chemicals should be included in these chemical ingredients such as ammonium nitrate, the acids and the oxidizers, that will identify who the manufacturers are. The residue from the explosions can be then traced to the manufacturers, then to the sellers and possibly to the terrorists who use them for terrorist purposes.

Hopefully, positive steps will be taken to thwart the efforts of terrorists to trying to purchase common chemicals used to make explosives. If we are successful, then there won’t be a need to place inert chemicals in the basic chemicals.