2000–2009 French police prevented
a terrorist attack in Strasbourg, France, on New Year's Eve 2000. Ten
militants were convicted for the plot. From 2002–04, pressure cooker bombs were widely used in terror and IED attacks in
Afghanistan,
India, and
Pakistan. In 2003 a terrorist from
Chechnya named Abdullah, carrying a pressure cooker bomb, detonated explosives and killed six people before being arrested near
Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan. The
Taliban claimed responsibility.
2010–present Step-by-step instructions for making pressure cooker bombs were published in an article titled "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom" in the
Al-Qaeda-linked
Inspire magazine in the summer of 2010, by "The AQ chef". The article describes the technique as a simple way to make a highly effective bomb. Analysts believe the work was the brainchild of
Anwar al-Awlaki, and edited by him and by
Samir Khan.
Inspire's goal is to encourage "
lone wolf" Jihadis to attack what they view as the enemies of
Jihad, including the United States and its allies. 's vehicle in New York’s
Times Square bombing Several
Islamic radical terrorist attempts in the 2010s involved pressure cooker bombs. Pressure cooker bombs were utilized in the
2011 Marrakesh bombing, where Adil El-Atmani, a Moroccan citizen who had pledged allegiance to
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, remotely detonated 2 homemade bombs, killing 17 and injuring 25. In July 2011,
Naser Jason Abdo, a U.S. Army private at
Fort Hood, Texas, who took pressure cooker bomb-making tips from the Al-Qaeda magazine article, was arrested for planning to blow up a restaurant frequented by U.S. soldiers. Two pressure cookers and bomb-making materials were found in his hotel room. He was sentenced to life in prison. In October 2012, French police found a makeshift pressure cooker with bomb-making materials near Paris as part of an investigation into an attack on a
kosher grocery store. The pressure cookers were filled with nails,
ball bearings, and
black powder. Initially, it was believed the devices were triggered by kitchen-type egg timers, however, subsequent evidence indicated a remote device was used to trigger the bombs. One of the bombers,
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, told investigators that he learned the technique from an article in
Inspire magazine. On
Canada Day 2013, pressure cooker bombs failed to explode at the
Parliament Building in
Victoria, British Columbia. On May 19, 2016, passengers on a bus in
Wrocław, Poland, alerted the driver to a suspicious package. The driver removed the package from the bus. Shortly later it
exploded with no fatalities but did injure one woman slightly. Authorities believed it was a three liter pressure cooker packed with nails and nitrate explosive. On September 17, 2016, an explosion occurred in Lower Manhattan, New York, wounding 29 civilians. The origin of the explosion was found to be a pressure cooker bomb. At least one other bomb was found unexploded. A suspect for
that explosion and others in New Jersey, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was captured two days later. Both the
2010 Stockholm bombings and the foiled
2016 Sweden terrorism plot involved pressure-cooker bombs. On January 20, 2023, Mohammad Farooq, a student nurse, was arrested outside the maternity ward of
St James's University Hospital in
Leeds, after planning to detonate a homemade pressure cooker bomb inside the hospital. A patient at the hospital had talked Farooq down from detonating the bomb. Farooq was sentenced to 37 years. ==See also==