Telegraph : Airline terror trial shown liquid bomb exploding

Airline terror trial shown liquid bomb exploding

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent | May 13, 2008

The destruction caused by an improvised liquid bomb exploding has been showed to a jury in the case of eight men accused of trying to blow up transatlantic airliners.

Footage of the devastating impact of home-made liquid bombs has been shown at the trial of eight men who deny planning to blow up planes.

The device, made from an Oasis soft drink bottle, had to be put together with a remote controlled arm at a government laboratory because the mixture was so volatile, a jury heard.

Keith Ritchie, a senior case office at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory said: “If the mixture reacted unexpectedly with the detonator inside it would result in the death of anybody nearby.”

The defendants watched intently on screens around the court as the orange-coloured mixture exploded blacking out a miniature camera close to the device and shattering 12mm laminated glass in front of another camera.

High density polyethelene protective boards around the sides of the concrete firing chamber were dented and sent flying into the air.

”The aftermath shows boards collapsed everywhere,” said Richard Whittam, prosecuting.

Further cameras showed the explosion from the back of the chamber and debris flying out of the chamber.

A high-tech Phantom 7 camera, shooting at 300 frames a second caught the moment of the explosion and shrapnel flying through the air in slow motion.

The explosion left debris across the floor of the chamber, blew a hole in the middle of a 5mm thick aluminium “witness plate” under the device and split plastic blocks on which it was sitting.

Five holes were left in a polyethelene plate under the device which corresponded with the bottom of the Oasis bottle used for the bomb.

Woolwich Crown Court heard the danger of the homemade device going off was so great that scientists at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory at Fort Halstead in Kent had to insert the detonator with a mechanical arm once they had left the chamber.

The court previously heard the men had not made the bombs but had “all the basic components necessary for the manufacture of one or more device.”

Police found a suitcase with bomb-making components hidden in woodland at King's Wood, near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire which had all the ingredients for making HMTD, which was to have been used in the detonator.

The mixture was said to have been intended for an emptied out Toshiba AA battery with a miniature lightbulb inside which would have been set off with a disposable camera.

For the main charge, it is claimed the gang planned to use a syringe to remove the contents from Lucozade and 500ml Oasis soft drinks bottles and replace them with a homemade explosive mixture of hydrogen peroxide and the soft drink powder Tang.

The “bomb factory” was to be a flat in Forest Road, Walthamstow, East London but the plotters were being watched and filmed by MI5 and were arrested in August 2006.

Eight men deny conspiracy to murder and the trial continues.

[and there's a video at the link]