Barot

Barot wrote a letter to the leaders of al-Qaeda proposing that he would mine the small amount of radioactive material known as americium that can be found in ordinary smoke detectors and use it to build a radiological device.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

U.S. investigators believe that bin Laden tasked Barot to conduct surveillance of financial and Jewish targets in New York and Washington.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

During the summer of 2004, as Bush campaigned for a second term, the outlines of what seemed to be another wave of serious al-Qaeda attacks on the East Coast appeared, this one linked to an al-Qaeda operative, Dhiren Barot.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Barot then applied to a college in New York, which gave him some plausible cover for casing financial targets on the East Coast between August of 2000 and April of 2001.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

In his presentation document to al-Qaeda, Barot said that the americium from around ten thousand smoke detectors would be needed to make the bomb effective and that once the device was detonated the subsequent radioactive cloud “has the potential to affect around 500 people.”

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Barot, a British convert from Hinduism to Islam, was, like many converts, more zealous than most of his coreligionists and had volunteered at age twenty to fight against the Indian army in Kashmir and later worked in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the late 1990s as an instructor at a military training camp.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Barot then sent his casing documents on to al-Qaeda Central in Pakistan.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

But Barot did not flee and was arrested by British police two days later.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Barot estimated that buying the ten thousand smoke detectors necessary to make the bomb would cost more than one hundred thousand dollars.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

A similar nonevent was the widely trumpeted plan by the al-Qaeda recruit Dhiren Barot to build a dirty bomb to be detonated either in the United Kingdom or the United States after 9/11.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011