LETTER, PARCEL & MAILING TUBE IEDs

IEDS have been sent through the mail and transported by couriers for many years. The Al Fatah (Black September ) faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) unleashed a world-wide letter bomb attack, directed from Holland, against Israeli embassies and consulates in 1972-73.

A number of personnel were injured by these crude mechanical firing devices embedded in about 8 ounces of plastic explosive, with a warning message inside. Police bomb squads and postal security intercepted and harmlessly defused many of the later waves of these letter IEDs, once they understood how they worked and how they could be defeated.

The IRA, Animal Liberation Front, other organizations, and the Unabomber in the U.S., have likewise mailed such devices, killing or severely injuring a number of unsuspecting recipients.

“Letter“ bombs may come in the form of standard envelopes, modified musical greeting cards, courier letter paks and padded mailers, mailed parcels and postal mailing tubes.

Not all of them have contained improvised explosive devices. Some have contained razor blades and scalpel blades, and hypodermic syringes containing contaminated blood. Others have contained arson devices and caustic chemicals designed to burns skin or blind the victims, upon being opened.

Additional others have contained powders claiming to be anthrax spores, and in one September, 2001 U.S. incident involving 4 such letters in the Connecticut-New Jersey-Washington, DC area, the letters did contain anthrax. 23 people contracted anthrax (many of them postal workers) and 5 died as a result of their exposure.

Securesearch, inc. manufactures a representative variety of these devices, in inert training aid form. Many of them are functional electrically and mechanically. They contain x-ray correct materials representing the powers sources, mechanical devices and switches, boobytraps and explosives.