Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication PrinciplesDetecting Critical Regions in Covert Networks: A Case Study of 9/11 Terrorists Network

This paper presents the study of structural cohesion which is discussed in social network analysis (SNA), but can also be used in several other important application areas including investigative data mining for destabilizing terrorist networks. Structural cohesion is defined as the number of actors who, if removed from a group, would disconnect the group. In this paper we discuss structural cohesion concepts, such as cliques, n-cliques, n-clans and k-plex to determine familiarity, robustness and reachability within subgroups of the 9/11 terrorist network. Moreover we also propose a methodology of detecting critical regions in covert networks; removing/capturing those nodes will disrupt most of the network