2001
Reconstructed shoe bomb used by Richard Reid
THE ADAPTED SHOES worn by Richard Reid, born in Britain, contain no metal components so they would not at that time have triggered the alarm of an airport screening device, but they were packed with explosives.
On 22 December 2001 – just over three months after the devastating attack on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon by Al-Qaeda – American Airlines flight 63 was in mid-flight from Paris to Miami when the cabin crew noticed a smell like burning matches and found Richard Reid trying to set light to a cord near the tongue of his shoes. Reid was then overpowered by the crew and passengers, and restrained with belts for the rest of the flight. The aeroplane was diverted to Boston where Reid was arrested. His shoes were found to contain PETN explosive, similar to nitroglycerine, with a safety-fuse detonating cord containing black powder that would burn and set off an initial explosion of homemade peroxide explosives. At his trial in an American court, he said, ‘I am a member of Al-Qaeda, I pledge to Osama Bin Laden, and I am an enemy of your country … I used a destructive device as an act of war. I do not recognise your laws … but I admit I tried to use a destructive device.’ He was sentenced to life and 110 years’ imprisonment in October 2002.
Reid had converted to Islam in prison in Britain and had attended a mosque in Brixton after being released. He had travelled to Pakistan and on to Afghanistan where he had taken up arms and attended a terrorist training camp. He had spent a week in Paris preparing for his attempt to bring down the airliner and had missed the same flight the previous day because he had been delayed by security checks at the airport by French police, who had been suspicious of him but had not detected the explosives in his shoes. It was the first time that this method of putting explosives on to an aeroplane had been discovered and this case is the reason for subsequent procedures for checking passengers’ footwear.
A second shoe bomber, Saajid Muhammad Badat, accompanied Reid at the same terrorist training camp. Badat was provided with shoes adapted in a similar manner to Reid’s but decided not to go through with the plan. He was arrested in 2003 and imprisoned for thirteen years in 2005, but freed in 2012 after providing information on up to eighteen terrorist plots covering a six-year period.