Bomb makers working globally

NEW YORK - United States investigators working for a new Government forensic unit have found indications of a global bomb-making network and concluded that bomb builders used the same designs for car bombs in the Mideast, Asia and Africa, the New York Times reported.

"Linkages have been made in devices that have been used in different continents," the Times quoted one forensic expert involved in the new intelligence effort as saying.

"We know that we have the same bomb maker, or different bomb makers are using the same instructions."

And while intelligence analysts said they believed al Qaeda had been weakened by anti-terrorism campaigns, the bomb investigations suggested that it may still be disseminating bomb-making instructions to militants around the world.

The new forensic unit behind the effort to analyse bombs used in attacks is called the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Centre, or Tedac. Terrorism specialists in Congress were briefed on the previously undisclosed intelligence operation's work this week, it said.

"Tedac is a multi-agency effort to analyse improvised explosive devices," the Times report quoted Dwight Adams, director of the FBI laboratory, as saying.

"It gathers and shares intelligence related to the construction of these devices. Its purpose is to save lives."

According to the FBI, which took the lead in the centre's creation, almost 90 per cent of attacks against Americans over the past five years have involved improvised explosive devices.

The unit, based at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, began its work in December. Lawmakers were told of its existence in recent days, the Times said.

It has drawn on input from a host of intelligence agencies including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

According to the Times, intelligence analysts believe followers of al Qaeda or sympathetic allies may be involved in some of the wave of bombings in Iraq, where none of the larger and most deadly suicide attacks has been solved.

Examination of bombs used in Iraq has yielded little about who made them.

But the centre's experts have begun to compile a data bank about the bombs, and in some cases have obtained evidence of who made the bomb through fingerprints or DNA material left behind.

The study of the unexploded device built into the shoe of Richard Reid, a British citizen and al Qaeda sympathiser who was sentenced to life in prison for attempting to blow up a passenger jet over the Atlantic Ocean in December 2001, is a model of how the new centre will operate, the Times said.

Investigators found the design of the shoe bomb followed specific instructions in training manuals found by US forces at training camps in Afghanistan.

The investigators doubted Reid built the bomb, and found evidence, such as a hair and fingerprints, that proved others were involved.

- REUTERS