Verulam mosque device ‘not a bomb’

The so-called bomb manufactured out of PVC piping, an old Nokia cellphone and some wires, which was found in the Imam Hussein Mosque in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal, on Sunday night was no such thing and probably would not have worked.

That’s according to Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hangweni Mulaudzi Mulaudzi, who described the item as an improvised incendiary device (IID) designed to start fires.

“It would just flare up and cause burns,” Mulaudzi said.

The discovery of the device after the building had been cleared by police before a visit to the mosque by Police Minister Bheki Cele has terror specialists and the police still questioning the motive for last week’s attack that left two people stabbed, leaving one in hospital and a third dead in an attack that left the South African Muslim community stunned.

Martin Ewi, senior researcher in the transnational threats and international crime division at the Institute of Security Studies, said it was still too early to make any judgments of the case.

“This seems as if it was an isolated attack,” said Ewi, referring to the stabbings.

Many of the traditional markers of an attack by a terrorist organisation were missing: the claim for credit for the attack, a focused attack instead of widespread targets (two incidents at the same address), and no forewarning (ie, we’re going to plant a bomb on a certain day and this is why but you won’t know where) were among the missing markers.

“The way I’m seeing it now is that it’s more of a hate crime,” Ewi said.

He said that although it appeared to have many of the hallmarks of terrorism, it was rare that an organisation would not have followed the usual steps to achieve the aim of spreading terror.

Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium director Jasmin Opperman concurred with Ewi, but noted there was an added danger of turning a localised issue into a national problem .

“Terrorism is a possibility, as is crime and a personal feud. However, we should not jump to conclusions,” said Opperman.

“We need to know what is happening at the mosque. What are the tensions? What is behind what is essentially a localised issue? Those are the fundamental questions we should be asking.”

Opperman said people were jumping to explanations centring on the “Sunni-Shia divide” and whether this was terrorism, along with other assumptions, despite not knowing what was going on.

“As long as those questions remain unanswered, all we’re going to do is speculate.”