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UP FRONTThursday 31 March 2016

Cyprus: After Brussels, leaders tackling
Hostages on hijacked plane recall fear, photo
the threat of nuclear terrorism
M. HADJICOSTIS “I was going out of my est choice, Cyprus.
S. MAGDY mind,” said Banchetti, a The atmosphere grew suf- JOSH LEDERMAN
Associated Press 47-year-old mechanic from ficiently informal and re- Associated Press
LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) — the Italian city of Genoa, laxed that one of the Eng- WASHINGTON (AP) — Still reeling from attacks in Brussels
First the hijacker said the recalling those confused, lish passengers, 26-year-old and Paris, world leaders are wrestling this week with the
women could leave. All the nerve-racking final minutes health and safety inspec- chilling prospect of the Islamic State group or other ex-
children, too. Then the man as the plane emptied with tor Ben Innes, posed for a tremists unleashing a nuclear attack on a major West-
in the suicide vest agreed only the five men kept on wide-grinning photo along- ern city.
that all Egyptians and board. They had been sin- side the self-billed bomber. Preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear materials
others from Muslim back- gled out after the hijacker “I’m not sure why I did it. I is the central focus as President Barack Obama hosts
grounds would be allowed confiscated their European just threw caution to the leaders from roughly 50 countries for a nuclear security
summit starting Thursday. Despite three previous sum-
EgyptAir plane hijacking suspect Seif Eddin Mustafa, second left, is escorted by Cyprus police mits and six years of Obama’s prodding, security offi-
officers as he leaves a court after a remand hearing as authorities investigate him on charges cials warn that the ingredients for a nuclear device or a
including hijacking, illegal possession of explosives and abduction in the Cypriot coastal town of “dirty bomb” are alarmingly insecure.
Larnaca Wednesday, March 30, 2016. “We know that terrorist organizations have the desire to
get access to these raw materials and to have a nucle-
(AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) ar device,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national
security adviser. Still, the White House said there was no
to escape from the plane. passports. wind while trying to stay indication of an imminent plot.
That left five Western men Not all expressed such cheerful in the face of ad- Decades after the Cold War, the threat of a nuclear
— at least one of whom open fears. The Dutchman versity. I figured if his bomb war between superpowers has given way to growing
thought they were about on board, 56-year-old busi- was real I’d nothing to lose concerns about non-state actors, including Islamic
to die. nessman Huub Helthuis, anyway, so took a chance State and al-Qaida offshoots operating in North Africa
“We looked each other in said when he talked to to get a closer look at it,” and in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Although the U.S. and
the eyes and we said: Here Mustafa once the plane Innes was quoted as telling its allies still worry about North Korea, Obama believes
we are. We’re at the end of had landed, the Egyptian The Sun newspaper in Lon- the threat posed by Iran has subsided due to last year’s
the line. It’s over,” recalled replied in English: “Don’t don. nuclear deal.
the Italian in the group, An- worry, nothing will hap- “I got one of the cabin The havoc such an attack could wreak in an urban
drea Banchetti, the day af- pen.” He eyed Mustafa’s crew to translate for me area like New York or London is concerning enough
ter an Egyptian man took vest of mysterious pock- and asked him if I could that leaders scheduled a special session on the threat
control of a short EgyptAir ets and tangled wires and do a selfie with him. He just during the two-day summit.
flight to Cairo by donning wondered whether they shrugged OK, so I stood Those concerns have taken on heightened signifi-
a fake explosives belt and were real. by him and smiled for the cance following the March 22 attacks at a Brussels air-
diverting it across the Medi- “The bombs were fake,” camera while a stewardess port and subway station. Last year, authorities search-
terranean to Cyprus. he recalled Wednesday did the snap,” Innes was ing the apartment of two brothers linked to attacks in
Seif Eddin Mustafa, 59, was in a telephone interview quoted as saying. Paris found video of a senior official at a Belgian nucle-
arrested by Cypriot police from Amsterdam, “but you Some fellow hostages said ar waste facility. The brothers were part of the Islamic
Tuesday without physically couldn’t know that.” they thought Innes had State cell that went on to strike Brussels; both died in the
harming a soul. The final five While the plane was still been a reckless imbecile. attacks.
from Britain, Italy and the airborne, flight attendants Banchetti told La Repub- On the summit’s sidelines, Obama planned to meet
Netherlands were ultimate- and the pilots said they blica newspaper in Rome with the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan, who
ly released just like the oth- tried to speak informally to that he’d wanted to slap all share U.S. concerns about North Korea’s nuclear pro-
ers. A day later, passengers Mustafa, offering him drinks Innes across the face. gram.
openly second-guessed and making small talk. The “How do you go up to him Yet other key players will be missing.
themselves over whether pilot, Amr Al-Gammal, said that way and take a photo Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to attend, as
they had been right to feel the hijacker even let him of him? ‘Are you a fool?’ I Moscow scoffed at what it deemed U.S. efforts to take
terrified, skeptical or some- choose whether to land in said in English,” Banchetti control of the process. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz
where in between. Turkey, Greece or the near- recalled. Sharif canceled his trip following an Easter bombing
that killed 72 people.
Some 2,000 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and
separated plutonium being used in civilian or military
programs could be turned into a nuclear bomb if stolen
or diverted, the White House said. And fewer than half
of the countries participating in the summit have even
agreed to secure their sources of radiological material,
needed for a dirty bomb.
“The policies are moving in the right direction,” said Joe
Cirincione, who runs the nuclear security group Plough-
shares Fund. “But when you’re fleeing a forest fire, it’s
not just a question of direction, it’s a question of speed.”
Unlike a nuclear bomb, the only people killed instantly
by a “dirty bomb” would be those close to the blast site.
But the blast could spread cancer-causing substances
over a vast area, triggering panic and evacuations.
Detonated in a major city, a dirty bomb could cause
tens of billions of dollars in economic damage, said An-
drew Bieniawski, who studies materials security at the
Nuclear Threat Initiative. People and businesseswould
have to be relocated — potentially for years — while
the contamination is cleaned up.