Not-So-Friendly Skies

James Carafano / August 31, 2010

On Monday evening, Dutch authorities detained Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi (of Detroit) and Hezem al Murisi when their United Airlines flight from Chicago landed in Amsterdam. It’s always a big mistake to jump to “instant analysis” based on preliminary press reports. But it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise if these two men turn out to have had bad intent.

Al Soofi and al Murisi are suspected of making a dry run for a future terrorist attack. Dry runs are common in the terrorism trade. Terrorists are a relatively scarce asset. They like predictability. They like to know the security they’ll be facing and the likelihood they can pull off a successful operation.

Nor is it surprising to find terrorists departing from the United States rather than heading to it. It has been all the fashion lately. David Coleman Headley, a Chicago-based Pakistani-American, was dispatched from the U.S. to scout out terrorist targets in Mumbai. In June, two New Jersey men — Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almont — were arrested at JFK as they were allegedly heading to join al Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia. (more…)