Eric Holder on terrorist bomb making in Yemen, Syria, ‘extreme concern’
New intelligence reports indicate that Yemeni bomb-makers are partnering with terrorists in Syria to build new types of virtually undetectable bombs, says Attorney General Eric Holder.
Appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Holder called the prospect “more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general … This is a situation that we can see developing. And the potential that I see coming out, the negative potential I see coming out of the facts in Syria and Iraq now are quite concerning.”
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The Yemen-based bomb-builders, such as Saudi native Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, are reportedly traveling to Syria, meeting with leaders of the Islamic State (ISIS), the group that has declared a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq.
“It’s something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern,” Holder said.
The Transportation Security Administration announced last Sunday that certain overseas airports would begin requiring passengers on some U.S.-bound flights to turn on cell phones and other electronic devices before they would be allowed onboard.
Holder indicated that rule was based on the information received about the Yemini bomb-makers and the Islamic State.
“This is not a test,” Holder said. “We’re doing something in reaction to things that we have detected.”
The U.S. Attorney Genreal then made the comparisons to the Bostom bombers.
“These lone wolves, these homegrown violent extremists are people who keep me up at night, as well, trying to monitor them, trying to anticipate what it is that they are going to do,” he said. “And, you know, the experience that we had in Boston is instructive. It only takes one or — or two people to really do something horrific.”
There is nothing new about al-Asiri, who is linked to the underwear bomber and was highlighted in alerts in February.
“He’s been identified as the designer of the “underwear bomb” that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab used to try take down a Northwest Airlines jet over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, and the 2010 cargo plane plot, in which explosives were pound packed into printers that were en route via cargo plane from Yemen to Chicago. He is believed to be the principal bombmaker for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror group’s Yemen affiliate.”
