According to Newsweek, US intelligence officials report that al Qaeda's explosives expert Ibrahim al-Asiri and medical doctors have been designing bombs to be surgically implanted into the bodies of suicide bombers. The idea is that the technique would somehow foil airport scanners. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "You da bomb!" From Newsweek:
An American government source familiar with the report described it as 15 to 20 pages, single spaced, and replete with schematics and pictures. "It was almost like something you'd see in Scientific American," the source said. (In military parlance, the bomb is called a "surgically implanted improvised explosive device," or SIIED.) A diagram with arrows and blocks of text explained the surgical process. "The idea was to insert the device in the terrorist's love handle," says the U.S. government source, who declined to be named discussing sensitive intelligence. While it was not clear whether the terror doctors had ever succeeded in implanting explosives in a human being, they had experimented with dogs and other animals.
Fortunately these devices are easier to describe than to detonate. "You would have to have a very unique firing system," says Borelli. "If it's a 'body bomb' you are going to have to have a way to initiate it from the outside—almost a stent, or something like a pacemaker."
"Ibrahim al-Asiri: The Body Bomb Menace" (via Dave Pell's NextDraft)
