US says (homemade!) terrorist groups plan to bomb US-bound flights

The United States has ordered the enhancement of security measures at selected overseas airports with nonstop flights to the country, saying terrorist groups are planning to bomb US-bound flights.

On Wednesday, the US Department of Homeland Security said “enhanced security measures” would be implemented “at certain overseas airports with direct flights into the United States” over the next few days. The move comes during the summer travel season and days before the July 4 holiday.

US officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the new security measures would include additional inspections of passengers’ shoes and property. They also said that the US had legal authority to order new security requirements at the selected airports because the flights go directly to the United States.

“We are sharing recent and relevant information with our foreign allies and are consulting the aviation industry,” said DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson in a statement.

According to the US officials, al-Qaeda-affiliated groups like the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda offshoot which is fighting the Syrian government, are believed to be working to develop explosives that could avoid detection by current airport screening systems.

Washington’s main concern is that militants with Western passports can blow up US-bound planes.

The United States has repeatedly raised concerns about the threat posed by terrorist militants in Syria and Iraq to America.

On Sunday, US President Barack Obama said that “battle-hardened” Europeans who have joined the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Syria and Iraq pose a “serious threat” to the US as they “have a European passport” and “don’t need visas to get into the United States.”

Obama’s former ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, also said last month that “we would be foolish to think” that ISIL militants would not plan attacks against the US.

“This is a more formidable force than Osama bin Laden’s group that brought us 9/11. Its fighters are experienced, completely committed to their cause, well armed and well financed. As many as 2,000 of them hold Western passports, including U.S. ones, so there’s no need for visas,” wrote Crocker in an op-ed for The Washington Post which was published on June 19.

Washington’s concerns come as several reports and observers have said these terrorist militants in Iraq and Syria have been funded, trained, and armed by the United States.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said last month that the US has been arming the ISIL militants in Syria. “I think we have to understand first how we got here,” Paul said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’ “We have been arming ISIS in Syria.”

In a phone interview with Press TV on Monday, Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist, said that CIA director John Brennan who is “a known Saudiphile” has played a key role in the creation and rise of the ISIL.