Al-Qaeda's Suicide Bomber Navy Poses Real and Present Threat Says Britain's Navy Chief

September 24, 2003
by Gordon Thomas

Britain's top Navy chief - Admiral Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff - has bluntly warned that the Royal Navy is "over stretched" to cope with the terrorist threat posed by the 15 ships that the al-Qaeda terrorist network is known to have bought in the last two years.

Lloyds of London have helped MI6 and the CIA to trace the sales. They were made through a Greek shipping agent who is suspected of having long-time contacts with Osama bin-Laden.

MI6 and CIA voice analysts are studying the latest bin-Laden tape for clues it contains instructions on targets for the ships to strike. In the past, bin-Laden has used videos to convey orders to al-Qaeda which preceded attacks in Bali and East Africa.

Flying flags of convenience of Yemen and Somalia - where they are registered - the ships are capable of carrying cargoes of lethal chemicals or a "dirty bomb".

Sir Alan's fear - echoed by intelligence services - is that the ships could enter US or British ports on a suicide mission.

Sir Alan, who became First Sea Lord last year, has said that "the maritime terrorist threat is a clear and present danger".

With the second anniversary of September 11 in mind, urgent steps have been taken to locate the freighters.

They are believed to be somewhere in the vast expanse of the Indian or Pacific Oceans. The ships are thought to have left their home ports in the Horn of Africa some weeks ago. Some gave as their destination, ports in Asia. But there has been no sighting of them.

US and British nuclear submarines are using state-of-the-art tracking equipment to try and locate them.

Neither Washington nor London will say what orders have been given to submarine commanders or the surface ships hunting for the terrorist vessels once they are located.

NSA satellites have been repositioned over the Indian and Atlantic Oceans to keep watch. Joint MI6/CIA listening posts on Gibraltar and in the Gulf have cast an electronic net over thousands of square miles of sea.

An even wider net has been cast by Britain's GCHQ, the electronic "invisible ear" in outer space.

Sir Alan has already identified potential targets would include oil rigs and ports. His unprecedented warning came after the US, Britain and nine other countries last week announced they were starting to intercept any ship suspected of being on a suicide mission.

Sir Alan has said the Royal Navy does not have enough ships to defend coastal approaches to Britain. In an interview with the specialist magazine Warships, he revealed:

"It does concern me that we may be overstretched to provide escorts for looking after high-value units and shipping. Like Nelson 200 years ago, I would like to have more escorts. The 32 frigates and destroyers of the Royal Navy in 2003 are highly capable, but that isn't to say I do not have concerns about the line between ships and commitments".

His warning comes after consultations last week between British and US port chiefs and the FBI and MI5.

The intelligence chiefs fear some of the freighters could try and ram a cruise liner operating out of Florida or a cross-Channel ferry in the English Channel.

"Even if they got close enough and detonated a "dirty bomb", the effect could be catastrophic", said a cruise line operator.

Major ports like London, Southampton and Liverpool in the UK, and New York and San Francisco in the United States have been equipped with ultra-secret monitoring technology to detect the contents of any suspicious ship.

But the determination of a suicide attack cannot be underestimated. In October 2000, the USS Cole, a heavily armed ship protected with the latest radar defences, was still hit by an al-Qaeda suicide crew. Seventeen American soldiers died. Two years later, following the attacks on the Twin Towers, a similar attack was carried out against a French supertanker off the coast of Yemen.

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