Officials said that Al Qaeda’s chief bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri – responsible for the underwear bomb recovered in an intelligence operation this week – had designed the bomb in the hope that fuzzy pets rigged with explosives would be harder to detect than anything Al Qaeda has used before.
Former chemistry student and Saudi citizen Al-Asiri, 30, has also been blamed for bombs hidden in printer cartridges that were smuggled onto US-bound cargo planes.
He is also believed to have been behind the underwear bomb worn by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his botched attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day 2009.
Seth Jones, former senior adviser to the US Special Operations Command, said: “He’s very innovative in trying to find some way to get a bomb on to an airplane that will evade detection from airport screeners.”
