UK police suggest Yemen bomb disarmed accidentally

Associated Press

LONDON

British police released new details Wednesday about their discovery of a mail bomb bound from Yemen for the United States, suggesting they might have disarmed the bomb accidentally rather than by design.

Police also said forensic evidence showed the device was timed to be detonated six to seven hours after the UPS cargo aircraft carrying it left the U.K. — and that, had it not been removed during transit in Britain, it could have exploded over the East Coast of the U.S.

That appeared at variance, however, with flight- data information showing the plane was over Canada at that time.

In a statement, Scotland Yard said explosives officers “disrupted” the explosive device during their initial examination when they took the printer cartridge — in which the bomb was hidden — out of a printer.

Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have said they only narrowly thwarted last month’s plot, in which terrorists in Yemen hid two powerful bombs inside printers and shipped them aboard cargo planes to addresses in Chicago. The printer cartridges were filled with PETN, an industrial explosive.