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| Homepage |  | News | | First International Symposium on Improvised Explosives takes place in Israel |
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| First International Symposium on Improvised Explosives takes place in Israel |
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| 20/5/08 |
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The first international symposium on improvised explosives (ISIE) is taking place this week in Israel. Over 100 experts from 12 countries were invited to this one-week event to discuss professional issues related to the war on terrorism. Specifically, the delegates will discuss and exchange scientific and technological information about improvised explosives, their properties, their detonation mechanism, new methods to detect them, ways to prevent using them by terrorist organizations, methods to neutralize them once discovered, etc.
All the Israeli security agencies are represented in the symposium, as well as national research institutions and research universities. Among the many foreign delegates are representatives of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the United States Department of Defense, the FBI, the British DSTL and many other international security organizations, universities and research institutes from the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. This unique event is sponsored by the Israeli National Security Council, the Israel Ministry of Public Security and the Israel Police, the Ben Gurion University, The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the DHS and the United States Office of Naval Research.
The peroxide-based explosives, and triacetone-triperoxide (TATP) in particular, which is known among the terrorists as “Mother of Satan”, were first used by terrorists in Hebron in 1980. Since then TATP has become one of the most popular explosives among terrorists of the Middle East and around the world, particularly for suicide bombing. For example, TATP was used in many known attacks, including the Dolphinarium disco, the pedestrian area in Jerusalem, the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem (all in 2001), many suicide bombings of busses all around Israel, Ariel gas station (2002), the public transportation in London (2005), the Shoe Bomber (2001), etc.
Charles R. Chambers of the Airport Council International has recently stated that improvised explosives devices that are based on TATP represent a major threat to civil aviation. This threat results from a combination of several parameters: the ready availability and low cost of the raw materials needed for the preparation of these materials, their easy synthesis, their high sensitivity and the fact that these compounds are very difficult to detect. In addition to the peroxides there are other dangerous home made explosives, such as urea nitrate, which is also cheap and readily prepared from simple starting materials. Urea nitrate (about 500 kilograms) was used by terrorists for the first time in the first bombing of the New York World Trade Center in 1993.
“Israel is the natural site for this event because much experience and expertise have accumulated in this country over the past three decades. The State of Israel was the first country to experience terror attacks with improvised explosives of the peroxide family, such as TATP and HMTD, and also the explosive Semtex. We hope that this conference will be an important milestone in the worldwide war against terror,” say the organizers, Prof. Joseph Almog (former Head of DIFS, Israeli Police), Prof. Ronnie Kosloff, both of the Hebrew University, Prof. Ehud Keinan of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Prof. Yehuda Zeiri of the Negev Nuclear Research Center and Ben Gurion University, Dr. Talya Arusi-Parpar of the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, Prof. Israel Barak, Chief Scientist in the Ministry of Public Security, Israel, Prof. Avi Domb, current director of DIFS, and Dr. Tsippy Tamiri of DIFS of Israeli Police.
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