Twenty-two-year-old Hanane al-Samawi, a computer science major at Sanaa University in Yemen, was arrested and charged with mailing two Al Queda bombs. But the coed was released after officials determined that she had been the victim of identity theft.
According to reports, another woman used al-Samawi’s name and identification to mail the bombs, and authorities are searching for that woman. Al-Samawi’s mother was arrested as well.
Yemeni President Ali Addullah Saleh said sources in the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates said the packages were discovered in the air cargo bays. Al-Samawi’s cell phone number was on the mailing slip for the Chicago-bound bombs.
Friends of al-Samawi said the coed is not active, politically or religiously, and isn’t militant in any way. Supporters staged a sit-in to protest her arrest.
The case has led investigators to take another look at the suspicious crash of a Kentucky-based UPS cargo jet in Dubai. The 747 went down Sept. 3, killing the two American pilots. The men had reported smoke in the cockpit and tried to turn the plane back. The cause of the crash remains unknown.
“The crash of the one plane off of Dubai – we are looking very carefully at that,” White House terror czar John Brennan said Sunday on CNN. “We’re making sure that we look at possible other events or other developments that might have some relationship with the most recent packages that we’ve discovered.”
But aviation officials say they have ruled out a bomb as the cause of that crash, because the black box didn’t record the sound of a blast.
