Mail bombs suspect 'had identity stolen'

The young Yemeni woman arrested on suspicion of mailing powerful bombs to US synagogues was released on bail today as Yemeni officials said authorities believed her identity had been stolen.

Authorities arrested 22-year-old Hanan al-Samawi after tracking the name and address used on the packages. But after she was arrested, the shipping agent said she wasn’t the one who signed the shipping documents, a Yemeni official said.

The release means investigators no longer have any suspects in custody in a suspected al Qaida plot that authorities believe was intended to take down cargo jetliners.

The Yemeni official said investigators now believe someone stole her identity and used it to mail the bombs.

The woman, an engineering student, was released on bail but cannot leave the country pending further questioning.

Earlier a Qatar Airways spokesman said that one of two powerful bombs mailed from Yemen to Chicago-area synagogues travelled on two passenger planes within the Middle East.

The US said the plot bears the hallmarks of al Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen and vowed to destroy the group.

The airline spokesman said a package containing explosives hidden in a printer cartridge arrived in Qatar Airways’ hub in Doha, Qatar on one of the carrier’s flights from the Yemeni capital Sana’a.

It was then shipped on a separate Qatar Airways plane to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it was discovered by authorities. A second, similar package turned up in at East Midlands airport on Friday.

He did not give any timeframe for the two flights in question – the airline operates daily passenger flights from Yemen that could also carry courier packages.

In Washington, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser John Brennan said authorities “have to presume” there might be more potential mail bombs like the ones pulled from planes in the UK and the UAE.

US inspectors were heading to Yemen to monitor cargo security practices and pinpoint holes in the system.

An internal government report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the team of six inspectors from the Transportation Security Administration will give Yemeni officials recommendations and training to improve cargo security.

The report also says the agency is considering extending its security directive to increase inspection of cargo for all flights through November 8.

“We’re trying to get a better handle on what else may be out there,” Mr Brennan told NBC’s Meet the Press as he made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows representing the Obama administration in the wake of the latest terrorist scare. “We’re trying to understand better what we may be facing.”

He told CNN’s State of the Union programme that “it would be very imprudent... to presume that there are no others (packages) out there.”

Brennan noted that because of the continuing threat, the world’s largest package delivery companies – FedEx and UPS – have suspended air freight from Yemen.

The explosives, addressed to Chicago-area synagogues, were pulled off airplanes at East Midlands airport in Leicestershire and the UAE on Friday after intelligence officials were tipped off about them.

Mr Brennan called it “a very sophisticated device, in terms of how it was constructed, how it was concealed” and said it was a viable device.

“They were self-contained. They were able to be detonated at a time of the terrorists’ choosing,” Mr Brennan said, adding that officials are trying to determine whether the planes or the synagogues were the intended targets.

“They are a dangerous group,” Brennan said of al Qaida in Yemen. “They are a determined group. They are still at war with us and we are very much at war with them. They are going to try to identify vulnerabilities that might exist in the system,” he said.

He said the US “will destroy that organisation as we are going to destroy the rest of al Qaida.”