Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — The mystery man suspected of trying to blow up an American Airlines jetliner was under suicide watch Tuesday as authorities investigated conflicting reports that he was a professional explosives maker, an Islamic extremist, a petty thief, a deranged homeless man — or none of the above.
Richard Reid spent Christmas Day in a top-security federal lockup at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility outside Boston, where authorities were watching him 24 hours a day via video camera. He has been in solitary confinement since his arrest Saturday afternoon, when the Paris-to-Miami flight on which he allegedly tried to ignite explosives in his shoes made an emergency landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
Federal authorities said Tuesday that Reid, or someone else, apparently hollowed out the heels of his high-top sneakers to conceal some type of plastic explosives.
The 28-year-old Reid could have constructed such rudimentary "shoe bombs" himself, one federal authority said. But he also said the FBI now believes that the time and effort needed to hide the explosives in such a fashion and get them past airport security was an indication that Reid may have had professional training or assistance.
"They get a feeling that there’s something there; they just can’t identify it," the law-enforcement official said of the FBI, regarding potential accomplices. "It’s all very puzzling."
The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that the FBI believes the shoe bombs found on Reid were so cunningly made that he probably had an accomplice. The paper quoted an unnamed Massachusetts state official as saying that a preliminary examination of Reid’s black suede athletic shoes revealed 4 to 5 ounces of explosive packed into each one and that FBI technicians had found each sole had been hollowed out and a detonation cord protruded from them.
The explosive material usually needs a battery or blasting cap to set it off, but FBI tests found a substance had been added that would have allowed it to be detonated by prolonged exposure to flame, the official told the Boston newspaper.
"The belief is now that if he had a lighter and not a match, the thing would have detonated," the official was quoted as saying.
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