LONDON/BOSTON: Instead of a cooking pot for home usage “Pressure Cooker” is become a big threat to U.S. citizens as “Pressure Cooker Bomb”.
According to the media reports and explosive weapon experts militants are using pressure cooker as “planted bomb” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and India from last couple of years.
“Pressure cooker bomb is become darling for rebels and anti state elements in South Asia because it’s easy to handle” said Farhan Zafar, TheNewsTribe’s correspondent from Pakistan.
In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security was concerned enough about pressure cooker bombs to issue an alert to federal and state security officials: “A technique commonly taught in Afghan terrorist training camps is the use/conversion of pressure cookers into IEDs,” the bulletin warned.
That bulletin cited several plots from 2002 to 2004 to use pressure cooker bombs in France, India and Nepal. But more recently there have been at least three other instances of would-be terrorists in the west, all of them Islamic radicals, in possession of pressure cookers for reasons that seemed not to involve having friends over for dinner.
One was an Army private linked to the 2010 Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, who had reportedly been taking bomb-making tips from the al Qaeda’s short-lived magazine Inspire and had various weapons and explosives along with his cooking pot.
“Inspire” since launching the publication in 2010, penning such articles as “How To Build A Bomb In the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
Wikipedia’s editors beleive that Inspire magazine promoted “open source jihad”.
This shifted away from al Qaeda’s traditional attacks to simple activities by individuals using common items for weapons.
“The Summer 2010 issue advised making a pipe bomb using everyday materials (“How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom”). The Fall 2010 issue encouraged using one’s car to “mow down” people in crowded places (“The ultimate mowing machine”). The Winter 2010 issue discussed how to blow up buildings. These provided individuals with simple ideas for terror attacks, without direct ties to al Qaeda or its affiliates.”
Nor does building a pressure cooker bomb require much money or special training. As DHS put it in 2004:
Typically, these bombs are made by placing TNT or other explosives in a pressure cooker and attaching a blasting cap at the top of the pressure cooker. The size of the blast depends on the size of the pressure cooker and the amount of explosive placed inside.
Pressure cooker bombs are made with readily available materials and can be as simple or as complex as the builder decides. These types of devices can be initiated using simple electronic components including, but not limited to, digital watches, garage door openers, cell phones or pagers. As a common cooking utensil, the pressure cooker is often overlooked when searching vehicles, residences or merchandise crossing the U.S. Borders.
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