AN airline passenger accused of trying to ignite explosives in his trainers was carrying a ''homemade bomb'' that could have blown a hole in the plane's fuselage, an FBI agent testified yesterday.
US government officials believe the plan may have failed because he was unable to light the fuse. The detonator cord was non-metal and could have become too wet to light.
The suspect - Richard Reid, a 28-year-old British citizen of British and Jamaican ancestry - yesterday appeared at a bail hearing in Boston district court with his hands shackled, wearing an orange jumpsuit.
This was his second court appearance. He has been held without bail since last Saturday, when he was arrested after American Airlines attendants saw him try to touch a lit match to his trainers during a Paris-to-Miami flight. Reid was overpowered, and the plane was diverted to Boston.
Judge Judith Dein yesterday found there was probable cause for the arrest and ordered that Reid be held without bail.
Reid has been charged with intimidation or assault of a flight crew, which carries a maximum 20-year sentence. But the FBI has indicated that additional charges are likely.
Margaret Cronin, an FBI agent and a specialist in crime on board aircraft, yesterday testified that the FBI had determined Reid was carrying ''functioning improvised explosives, or, in layman's terms, a home-made bomb''.
She said an explosives expert concluded that if the trainers had been placed against an outside wall and detonated, they ''would have blown a hole in the fuselage''.
Reid was sitting in a window seat on board the plane.
Tests on the explosives showed signs of PETN, a material used to make Semtex, the same explosive used by Libyan terrorists in 1988 to down PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, a US government official said.
Arguing for no bail to be set at Reid's court appearance yesterday, Colin Owyang, an assistant US attorney, said Reid presented a flight risk because he had ''essentially no verifiable address
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anywhere in the world''. He also said Reid had at least 10 prior criminal convictions, though authorities have no record of him previously being in the US.
Tamar Birkhead, Reid's court-appointed lawyer, did not specifically argue that Reid be released on bail yesterday but asked the judge to rule soon so the defence could begin work on its case.
It came as the Metropolitan Police commissioner said Britain was not warned that Reid was a potential security risk. Sir John Stevens called for better relationships with law enforcement agencies to improve the fight against international terrorism.
Meanwhile, Reid is not a terrorist but merely a ''lost soul'', his aunt said yesterday.
Madeline Reid, 50, said her nephew had ''found solace'' with his Muslim brothers after allegedly being rejected by his mother.
''They became his family and he owed them loyalty. I don't believe for a second he was burning with hate for the West. He's no terrorist - he's a lost soul.''
Mrs Reid, 50, of Sussex, believes her vulnerable nephew was exploited for a cause he had misunderstood to be a holy war.
She said: ''Now I'm praying to God to keep him safe and hoping they don't beat him up in jail.''
Investigators are casting a wide net in a global search to determine whether Reid had any ties to terrorist groups. Officials in Israel, France, the US, and the Netherlands have been retracing his travels ahead of last Saturday in a bid to corroborate claims from al Qaeda prisoners that Reid trained with them at Osama bin Laden's Afghan terror camps.
It also emerged yesterday that in July Reid took an El Al flight from Turkey to Tel Aviv - after passing a security check by the Israeli airline. An El Al spokesman said staff stopped Reid because he looked suspicious, but cleared him to fly after a check of his luggage, body, and shoes.
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