A former al-Qaeda agent who worked with explosives before he defected to become an MI6 spy has revealed how the actions of a British man who became a master bombmaker for ISIS led to America’s laptop ban on flights, the Guardian reported Sunday.
Ex-agent Aimen Dean said in his autobiography that Hamayun Tariq of Dudley, England, planned to smuggle bombs “disguised as laptop batteries.”
This prompted a ban to be implemented in 2017 barring passengers from carrying laptops on U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports in the Middle East and North Africa.
Tariq, a car mechanic who became a jihadist and relocated to somewhere along the Syria-Iraq border, had posted on Twitter about creating bombs. Dean wrote that Tariq is also designing drones capable of striking football stadiums or other crowded venues.
