2010 transatlantic aircraft bomb plot

On October 29, 2010, two packages, each containing a bomb consisting of of plastic explosives and a detonating mechanism, were found on separate cargo planes. The bombs were discovered as a result of intelligence received from Saudi Arabia's security chief. They were in transport from Yemen to the United States and were discovered at stopover locations: one at East Midlands Airport in the UK and one in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. One week later, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) took responsibility for the plot and for the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 6. American and British authorities believed that Anwar al-Awlaki of AQAP was behind the bombing attempts and that the bombs were most likely constructed by AQAP's main explosives expert, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. The bombs were probably designed to detonate in flight, with the intention of destroying both planes over Chicago or another American city. Each bomb had already been transported on passenger and cargo planes at the time of discovery. On October 28, Saudi Arabia's deputy interior minister of counterterrorism Prince Mohammed bin Nayef called John Brennan, the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Riyadh, to warn him of the plot. The Saudis provided the U.S. and Germany with the tracking numbers and destinations of the packages and informed them to look for toner cartridges. The packages had been deposited by a woman at FedEx and UPS offices in Sana'a, Yemen on October 27, and were scheduled to arrive in Chicago on November 1. Saudi Arabia had reportedly learned of the plot through Jabir Jubran Al Fayfi, a former Guantánamo Bay detention camp inmate who had been remanded to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation in 2006. Al-Faifi had escaped in 2008 and rejoined AQAP, but surrendered to Saudi authorities on October 16, 2010 and provided them with information about the plot. Yemeni officials suspected that al-Faifi had not actually rejoined al-Qaeda but had become a double agent.