More Stupid Terrorists

• I provided a listing today of nine stupid terrorists, suspected terrorists, and would-be terrorists who made dumb mistakes; it is, of course, not complete, so I will note other instances as they come to my attention (but not including routine traffic code violators, who have their own dedicated weblog). (October 4, 2005)
• On Sep. 2, 1999, Israel went off of daylight savings time to make it easier for Orthodox Jews to attend Selichot, a pre-sunrise penitential prayer that runs from a week before Rosh Hashana through Yom Kippur; but the Palestinian Authority refused to follow Israel, leading to a two-week period when the two were an hour apart. To try to undermine the Sharm el-Sheikh accords, signed on Sep. 4, 1999, two Palestinian terrorists a day later tried to attack Israelis. But the Islamists set the bomb timers to go off on one schedule and themselves kept another one. As a result, the bomb went off when they were still transporting it, leading to the deaths of both men but no Israelis. (December 13, 1999)
• On May 16, 2003, terrorists set off five near-simultaneous attacks in Casablanca, killing 29 people. But two of the groups made elementary mistakes. One attack took place at a Jewish community center that was closed and empty; the attack would have been far more deadly had they timed the attack on a sabbath. A second bomber blew himself by a public fountain in Casablanca's old city, killing three Muslims; he probably intended to attack a similar fountain at the entrance of a Jewish cemetery not far away. (June 28, 2003)
• Anes Alic writes for ISN Security Watch: "Since October last year, 40 teenagers, several of whom met each other face-to-face or via the internet, have been arrested worldwide and indicted on terror charges in a case in which prosecutors are trying to prove that all suspects were linked in a European terrorism cell. … prosecutors believe that the group, if indeed it is proved to be a group, was preparing suicide attacks in countries in which they lived. Prior to their arrests, there is evidence showing that many of the suspects had made contact with each other either face to face or using the internet. Moroccan national Younis Tsouli, a 22-year-old computer expert, was arrested in October in London. Authorities believe he is the central figure in a cyber-terrorist network that reaches from Europe to North America. … Officials believe Tsouli was using one of his chat rooms to communicate with radical recruits in Toronto and Atlanta. They also believe his cyber code name was 'Irhabi007' (Arabic for 'Terrorist007')." (June 7, 2006)
• Ashish Nayyar, an Indian national, decided to defy the New York subway system's ban on smoking and puffed away on a cigarette as he awaited the elevated No. 7 train at Queensboro Plaza around midnight on July 20. An undercover policeman issued him a ticket for smoking, then did a warrant check and discovered that the FBI in Texas had put Nayyar on the terror watch list. But after investigators confirmed his identity, they decided that he was "not a player" in terrorism and released him into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for being in the United States illegally. (July 22, 2006)
• The six Islamists arrested on charges of attempting to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey made two stupid mistakes. They sent their jihadi video (depicting, according to the criminal complaint, "10 young men who appeared to be in their early twenties shooting assault weapons at a firing range in a militia-like style while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic, 'Allah Akbar'") to a Circuit City store in Mt. Laurel, N.J., be turned into a DVD – rather than acquire the machinery themselves to do this delicate conversion. The clerk, who was authorized to view the material "for quality purposes," alerted law enforcement about its "disturbing" quality. Plus, what were the six thinking when they planned an attack on one of the best-fortified installations in the entire northeast United States, so secure that its premises contain a prison? (May 8, 2007)

Aug. 18, 2009 update: For another take on this topic, see "The 5 Most Embarrassing Failures in the History of Terrorism" by Bronzulton Q at Cracked.com.

• The explosives Faisal Shahzad set off in New York's Times Square did not go off because he made two technical mistakes: he acquired fertilizer without urea that does not explode; and he bought 152 of the M88 Silver Salutes fireworks that have to be lit individually, and so did not provide the required fuse. For an amusing riff on this unamusing topic, see Max Fisher, "The Incompetent Terrorist." (May 6, 2010)

• · Andrew Osborn writes for the Daily Telegraph how a Chechen female slipped up:

  A "Black Widow" suicide bomber planned a terrorist attack in central Moscow on New Year's Eve but was killed when an unexpected text message set off her bomb too early, according to Russian security sources. The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt on a busy square near Red Square on New Year's Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.

  Security sources believe a spam message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her but nobody else. She was at her Moscow safe house at the time getting ready with two accomplices, both of whom survived and were seen fleeing the scene. … The phones are usually kept switched off until the very last minute but in this case, Russian security sources believe, the terrorists were careless.

  (January 27, 2011)

• And for comic relief, how about a stupid counterterrorist? An unnamed British immigration officer was sacked for gross misconduct after adding the name of his annoying wife to a list of terrorist suspects. The Daily Mail's Steve Doughty elaborates: "He used his access to security databases to include his wife on a watch list of people banned from boarding flights into Britain because their presence in the country is 'not conducive to the public good'. As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after travelling to the county to visit family. The tampering went undetected until the immigration officer was selected for promotion and his wife name was found on the suspects' list during a vetting inquiry." (January 30, 2011)
• Stupidity can also be non lethal: Al-Qaeda operative Mohammad Qasim al Ghamdi invested US$26.7 million at the Chicago-based brokerage house of R.J. O'Brien & Associates in 2005 and then proceeded to make a string of bad decisions that left him with a mere $6.6 million eight months later. (June 21, 2011)

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