• From losing your terrorist funds by gambling online to ¬¬¬¬¬¬blowing up your entire
class during a suicide bombing lesson, we count eight of the dumbest terror plots that
failed!
8 • Live TV can be intimidating.
There are certain things you don’t want to screw up while cameras are broadcasting
to millions around the country.
While I’ve never done it, I assume assassinating a politician is one of these.
• But that’s exactly what happened for would-be assassin Oktai Eni-meh-me-dov when
screwed up his assassination plot at point-blank range in 2013.
His target was Bulgarian politician Ahmed Dogan.
Instead of accosting him in some dark alley, for some reason Oktai thought it was smart
to do the deed live on TV.
• He couldn’t get a hold of real gun, so went for a gas pistol, which fires tear
gas pellets instead of bullets.
This meant he had to shoot him in the eye from right up close.
He stuck the gun right in Ahmed’s face and fired, but the pistol jammed.
Ahmed swatted him away like some fly and Oktai was swarmed by an angry mob from the audience.
Now THAT is a bad day at the office.
7 • In 2013, Islamic extremists in England
redefined stupid with an explosively dumb plan to kill civilians using … sports icepacks?
• They planned to buy hundreds of icepacks using money received from impersonating charity
representatives and construct a giant bomb using the icepack’s key ingredient: ammonium
nitrate.
• Unfortunately for them, these icepacks no longer contain ammonium nitrate.
HA, I bet these assholes wish they’d paid attention in science class now.
Their plan was doomed to fail anyway, as they even bungled the ‘extort a charity’ part
of the plan, only securing enough to buy a single ammonium nitrate-free icepack.
Clearly in the wrong career, guys.
• To change their fortunes, the 322-pound ringleader ‘Chubbs’ tried online gambling.
But one of Chubbs’s cronies lost £9,000 placing dud bets and leaving the betting site
unattended while making a cup of tea.
• The group was eventually caught and their entire legal defence was constructed around
how pathetic they were.
These fucking morons make Team Rocket look like criminal geniuses.
6 • Terrorist schemes are usually foiled by
the FBI with the help off anonymous tip-offs, but in this instance the hero of the show
was a little guy called static electricity.
• Salman al-Taezi and Walid Ashibi were a pair of Yemeni terrorists who planned to
blow up a national embassy with a missile.
They set up base near the Cuban Embassy and were in the final stages of preparations when
everything went wrong.
• While walking across the carpet, Walid generated enough static electricity with his
feet that their missile accidentally misfired.
Instead of heading across the street for its target, it shot straight at Salman, killing
him instantly.
Walid himself suffered grievous wounds and died shortly after.
• Ever played a videogame where you forgot to turn of friendly fire?
Ugly stuff.
5 • In 2007, some wannabe extremists finished
their copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Terrorism and began preparing an attack
on New Jersey’s Fort Dix Army Base.
Unfortunately, they’d only skim-read chapter five, so didn’t get the part about not putting
fucking incriminating videos in the hands of your enemies!
• The stupid dipshits had been videotaping their shooting range training sessions with
a camera they’d bought from Best Buy.
That’s right, Best Buy.
Let’s take down capitalist America by … supporting capitalist America?
• Anyway, they were also useless with technology, so went to an electronics store for help transferring
their footage to DVD.
The clerk who helped them was just an ordinary Joe, but even he could see the gun-waving
idiots shouting for Jihad in the footage were up to no good.
He reported the punks to the police and, with handy video evidence, it was easy to convict
them of conspiracy to commit acts of terror.
4 • Teaching a class of suicide bombers how
to blow themselves up might not sound like rocket science, but apparently it’s harder
than it looks.
• At least it was for the instructor at a terrorist training camp in Baghdad.
The instructor was teaching a class on bomb construction when the damn thing went off
in his hands, killing him and all of the twenty-one trainees in attendance.
• Iraqi citizens called their stupid deaths an ‘act of god’ and believed it was payback
for all the innocent lives terrorists have taken.
3 • If Osama bin Laden is remembered as the
most dangerous terrorist ever, Mohammad Ashan may be remembered as the dumbest.
• Mohammad was a wanted Taliban commander in Afghanistan who turned himself in to authorities
to claim the reward money.
This idiot walked right up to a police checkpoint, pointed to the wanted poster featuring his
face, and asked for enthusiastically asked if he could have the finder’s fee.
I don’t think anyone told him how wanted posters work.
• Security forces arrested him and officials called him an ‘imbecile’ and ‘the Taliban
equivalent of the Home Alone burglars’.
In case you’re thinking that he was just some weird lookalike, officials took a biometric
scan of him and confirmed that he was really the man they’d been looking for.
2  Australia’s been pretty fortunate when
it comes to terror attacks.
Most of them have been minor or narrowly averted.
In 2016, this almost changed.
Nineteen-year-old Sevdet Ramadan Besim had plotted a deadly attack on the city of Melbourne.
The plot involved explosives and a beheading and was set to be executed on Anzac Day, Australia’s
national holiday for commemorating fallen soldiers.
 Fortunately, his plan was an eleven out of ten on the stupidity meter and only would’ve
worked if this was a Looney Tunes cartoon rather than, y’know, real life.
The plan involved stuffing a kangaroo’s pouch with explosives, painting the creature’s
fur with Islamic State symbols, and setting it loose on police officers.
 Police arrested Sevdet before he could enact his harebrained scheme, which is almost
a shame; it would’ve been cool to see a wild kangaroo beat the shit out of him.
1 • We’ve all heard spiels about text messaging
taking lives, but this Russian suicide bomber found out this doesn’t just apply to drivers.
• The woman was hoping to detonate a bomb and kill everyone around her during a New
Year’s Eve celebration in Moscow’s Red Square.
However, while she was still in the safe house, an unexpected text message came in and accidentally
set off her belt bomb, blowing her to pieces before she could make a political statement.
• Ironically, the message was from her phone company wishing her a Happy New Year.