05.02.10
Shades of Gas Limos Project: NY Car Bomb
Updated
News of the New York propane cylinder car bomb immediately made DD think of Dhiren Barot’s Gas Limos Project in 2006.
Barot, who was in no way a successful al Qaeda terrorist, was nevertheless sent over permanently in England, convicted on the evidence found in his files in a UK anti-terror sweep named Operation Rhyme.
I wrote here:
Barot, locked up for life as a terrorist after pleading guilty in British courts in 2006, has been regularly portrayed as an al Qaeda “General” who concocted what became known as the Gas Limos Project, an outline for bombings using limousines packed with gas cylinders.
Barot’s files were put on the Internet by the London Met. They were removed after a year or so but copies saved by DD were archived at the Federation of American Scientists.
They are heavily redacted but Barot, who never made one of his car bombs, describes them in general terms.
One of Bharot’s difficulties in planning, one which his writing implies he was unable to solve, was how to achieve reliable detonation. At one point, he mused about using hand grenades.
Making sure your ad hoc jerry-bilt collection of materials explode is one of the problems apparently always faced by potential improvised car bombers. It’s not as simple as the movies make it look every day of the week.
“In the event of fire around the [gas cylinder], a dangerous event that can take place is termed as the BLEVE, this is an acronym, which stands for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion,” reads one of Barot’s files.
London newspaper’s made a similar connection today, writing about the Times Square incident in relation to an unsuccessful car bomb attack in the UK attributed to al Qaeda three years ago.
In the Telegraph, one reads:
The Times Square car bomb in New York bears all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack on central London three years ago.
This article described a spectacularly inept but literally flamboyant attack in England. It was remarkable for one of the attackers setting himself on fire as he attemtped to ram his car bomb into the Glasgow airport.
It is described here in Jeep Man on Fire.
Wrote the Telegraph correspondent today:
The men left cars packed with gas canisters and petrol outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub on the Haymarket, between Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square, in London’s busy West End.
The first car, a green Mercedes, was parked with the headlights on in a bus lane outside the front entrance to the nightclub.
The device failed to fully ignite, and the fume-filled vehicle was spotted by a doorman at the nightclub.
A second car bomb, in a blue Mercedes, had been parked at the back entrance to the club but was towed away by parking wardens and found several hours later at a car pound in Hyde Park.
The general ideas behind gas cylinder packed cars have been with al Qaeda for some time. However, the concept of putting gas cylinders into cars is not unique to that group.
Dhiren Barot discussed several methods for putting ‘add-ons’ to his notional car bombs in the Operation Rhyme files.
One of these had to do with fireworks. (As well as fertilizer, inspired because it was used by — according to Bharot, “Timothy McVee.”)
Fireworks, Bharot tried to explain, could — by dint of the explosions and popping noises they make — heighten terror.
In the Times Square incident, the smouldering fireworks drew attention to the bomb.
At this point in time, officials have said they have no evidence the Times Square incident was associated with al Qaeda or more than a lone wolf incident.
However, the existence of a ‘gun locker’ in the car bomb, along with a sizable number of M-88 firecrackers — and potentially an amount of fertilizer — argues strongly for a domestic origin.
Large amount of fertilizer component, video — domestic white guy (?) How unexpected.
Nope. Indeed was shades of Gas Limos project.