Safety in the Skies Series
Russian Airliners Were Likely Exploded From Their Toilets
This is Part VI of the ongoing series entitled "Terror in the Skies, Again?"
By Annie Jacobsen
8/30/2004
Over the weekend, it was widely reported that the two airliners which went down almost simultaneously last week in Russia, killing 89 people on board, were the deadly result of terrorists' bombs.
What hasn't been widely reported is that Russian investigators now believe the two commercial aircraft were exploded from their toilets.
According to the Russian newspaper Gazeta, At first, the experts on explosives were puzzled as they saw no traces of explosions in the passenger salons or noses of the planes. However, when the tail part of the TU-154 was examined, in the area where the toilet is, a piece of the edging with the illuminator had been torn away.
Pravda.Ru, one of Russia's leading sources for news online, ran the following headline: TU-134 and TU-154 Were Exploded From Their Toilets.
Further supporting this theory, Voice of America (an international broadcasting service with a weekly audience of 96 million people) reported from Moscow on August 28, 2004, The body parts of one woman were scattered widely on the ground. Officials said parts of her legs were found in the toilet section of one plane, leading to speculation that she might have detonated some kind of explosive from there.
The Russian government is focusing their investigation on two female passengers with purported links to Chechen terrorists. Meanwhile, a radical Islamic group called The Islambouli Brigades of al-Qaeda has come forward to claim responsibility for both crashes. The Islamic group claims it had five people, or mujahadeen, on board each aircraft. So, are the dual tragedies the work of Chechen terrorists, or the work of the terrorists we Americans are now very familiar with -- fundamental Islamic extremists?
The answer could be both. What many don't realize is that there is a direct link between the Chechen fighters and the Islamic extremists. Chechens are a largely Muslim ethnic group who have lived for centuries in the mountainous Caucasus region, located south of Moscow and north of Iran. The area has been ravaged by conflict since 1994 with at least 100,000 civilians and 10,000 Russian troops killed in the fighting. Support for the Chechen cause is widespread throughout the Arab world and the Arab news network Al-Jazeera frequently broadcasts reports of Russian abuses against Muslims there.
Arab commanders are leading the majority of rebel forces in Chechnya -- fighting in the name of Jihad, or holy war. What began a decade ago as largely hit-and-miss attacks against the Russian army (Chechnya wants autonomy from Russia) has progressed to the widespread use of terror.
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Whether or not The Islambouli Brigades of al-Qaeda is directly linked to Osama Bin Ladin is not yet clear. But the terrorists' affiliation with Bin Ladin's al-Qaeda cannot be overlooked. The group's late, eponymous leader, Lt. Khaled Islambouli, killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat during a military parade in Cario in 1981. He was executed for the crime a year later. Islambouli, a member of the terrorist organization Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was inspired to kill Sadat by the preachings of the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, presently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his connection to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Egyptian Islamic Jihad (the precursor to The Islambouli Brigades of al-Qaeda) merged their organization with Bin Ladin's al-Qaeda in the late 1990's.
Female suicide bombers (also called black widows) with links to Islamic fundamentalists are on the rise. In 2002, a crowded Moscow theatre was overtaken by 50 Chechen rebels -- 18 of them women dressed in black and strapped with explosive belts. The Muslim fighter Shamil Basayev (also known as the Most Wanted Man in Russia) claimed responsibility for planning the raid and, specifically, training the women for Jihad.
Russian news source Pravda ran this headline on December 11, 2001: Arab Mercenaries Prepare Female Kamikazes in Chechnya. This from the article:
Arab Mercenaries are training female suicide bombers in Chechnya, an informed source in Russian secret services reported on Tuesday. According to [the source], not less than 30 women, most of them wives or relatives of Chechen rebels and even field commanders are currently being prepared in training camps located, primarily, in the mountainous regions of Chechnya. They are being prepared by Arab instructors from Khattab's gang.
Khattab is the late Chechen warlord who, in 2002, appeared in a videotape with Osama Bin Ladin. According to The St. Petersburg Times, the videotape, made in 2000, shows inter-cut scenes of terrorist activities in al-Qaeda training camps (in Afghanistan) and on the Chechen battlefields. Also on the tape, alongside Khattab, is Shamil Basayev The Most Wanted Man in Russia. It is purported to be a fund-raising tape for potential donors. The videotape was purchased by the newspaper Newsday from a landlord in Kabul who claimed his tenants, al-Qaeda members, fled during the U.S. bombing and left the tape behind.
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Even before the video tape surfaced, Russian President Vladimir Putin maintained that al-Qaeda funneled millions of dollars to Chechen rebels through Khattab. With the videotape, the government had little trouble substantiating these claims. On a historical note, Osama Bin Ladin and Khattab fought side-by-side against the Soviet Union as mujahadeen in Afghanistan throughout the 1980's.
Two months after the tape surfaced, Russian military forces killed Khattab. Another Muslim fighter, Abu Walid (also an Afghani mujahadeen from the 80's) stepped forward to take Khattab's place on the Chechen battlefield. Abu Walid married a Chechen woman and commanded local rebel forces throughout the region until he was killed on April 18, 2004 by the Russian army. It is unclear who has taken his place.
While Muslim jihadis are lining up to die, it also seems that where they go, and which conflicts they enter into doesn't necessarily matter to them. Or, as stated in the 9/11 Report, it's decided for them. Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijacking plot, initially planned to join the fight in Chechnya. Bin Laden, however, had a different assignment for Atta. Zacarias Moussaoui, currently in U.S. custody and charged with being the 20th hijacker, was reported by the Wall Street Journal to have been a recruiter for al-Qaeda-backed rebels in Chechnya -- before he took up flight training in America.
It may all seem a bit confusing, but the bottom line seems to be that these Islamic fundamentalist groups, including the Chechens, look at themselves as part of a greater cause: the holy war, or Jihad.
In his Letter to America, Bin Ladin writes: Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. So what are we waiting for?
Let me link back to my first article in this series, Terror in the Skies, Again? In that article, I detailed suspicious activity by 14 Syrian men which included long stays in the bathrooms, congregating in groups around the bathrooms, and bringing items into the bathrooms that don't normally belong there -- namely large McDonald's bags, cell phones, and cameras. Based on subsequent research, I was shocked to learn that the FBI had already issued a specific warning to flight crews that Islamic Militants were planning to build bombs in aircraft lavatories (by bringing individual components in to bathrooms separately) and that none of the crew on flight 327 intervened.
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In Part Five of this series, I interviewed fellow flight 327 passenger Billie Jo Rodriguez. Rodriguez gave me the startling news that one of the Syrian men spent about 10 minutes in the lavatory and then came out of the lavatory reeking of toilet chemicals. As I have previously stated, multiple government agencies (including FBI, JTTF, FAMS and LAPD) met the plane in Los Angeles to question the men. But because the men didn't immediately match up against names on the government's no-fly lists, they were let go.
Here is another detail that I have only recently discovered. I now know that the 14 Syrians aboard my flight 327 were questioned by the FBI for between 20 and 30 minutes after landing. (Initially, I was told they were held and questioned for approximately two hours.) How can our agencies possibly gather intelligence on 14 men in only 20 minutes? Even if they had done some of the legwork before the plane landed, they couldn't possibly conduct a thorough investigation in such short time. And again, I'll ask why none of the other passengers were questioned? Had the FBI ascertained Billie Jo Rodriguez' information about one of the Syrian men emerging from a bathroom smelling like toilet chemicals (after nearly knocking another passenger over so as to get inside first) -- those men may not have been out the door and on their way to their musical gig after just 20 minutes.
As of press time, no one from the FBI, the JTTF or the DHS or any other government agency has contacted me, Billie Jo Rodriguez or any of the other passengers on flight 327. Maybe the Russians will. The war on terrorism is a global war. It knows no boundaries. Whether you're on a Russian TU-134 or a Boeing 757, the enemy is the same.
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