What is ‘Mother of Satan,’ the explosive used in the botched Gracie Mansion bombing?
The radicalized teens charged with hurling a bomb at a Gracie Mansion protests allegedly used an explosive that has long been a favorite of international terrorists — with deadly consequences.
Triacetone Triperoxide, or TATP, is a highly volatile substance known as “Mother of Satan” that has been linked to high-profile terror attacks throughout the globe for more than a decade, The Post has learned.
“Anything can set it off, heat, friction, impact. It’s cheap, hard to detect but highly unstable,” one law enforcement source said Sunday. “It’s a mixture of stuff found in common hardware and drug stores.
“You can get it pretty much anywhere, and it’s hard to detect,” the source said. “The downside is it’s very sensitive and unstable. If you drop it or something falls on the mixture, it will detonate.”
TATP was tied to a Nov. 10 blast in New Delhi that killed more than a dozen people, as well as 2017 terror attacks in Barcelona, Spain and Manchester, England that killed 13 and 22, respectively.
TATP devices were also linked to coordinated terror bombings in Brussels, Belgium in March 2016 that killed 32 people and left more than 300 others injured, as well as a 2015 attack during a soccer match in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis in France that left dozens dead and injured.
It is unknown what the death total could have been if the device allegedly hurled by 18-year-old Emir Balat and 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi had gone off.
“All we did was get lucky,” the source said about the botched Gracie Mansion bombing. “They didn’t get the right mixture or concentration. This is just luck no one is dead.”
