Word: airports
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...extremist insurgents occupy villages with gunfire and government bombs rain down from the sky? Is al-Qaeda an army or just a bunch of ill-equipped gangs? "All citizens are scared," says Jamal al-Najjar, an English-language translator, while waiting for a group of foreign journalists at the airport. The visible influx of overseas media, hungry for stories, adds to the sense of crisis...
Nowadays, even a stray pair of tweezers or a bottle of saline solution can make a journey through airport security an unpleasant experience. So when Irish authorities were alerted on Tuesday that a man had passed through Dublin Airport days earlier carrying high-grade plastic explosives, it's not surprising that a large-scale security alert was triggered. The roads around the 49-year-old electrician's apartment in Dublin were cordoned off, and bomb-disposal experts searched the premises, turning up 3 oz. of the powerful explosive material RDX. The amount was greater than what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab...
...explosives had in fact been planted in the passenger's bag by security staff at Poprad-Tatry International Airport in northern Slovakia as part of a test of screening procedures. The Slovakian Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that a sniffer dog had discovered the explosives but the officer got called away to another task and forgot to remove the materials from the bag. The electrician then boarded his Danube Wings flight, completely unaware of his hidden cargo. The Slovakian government says the airport authorities then contacted the pilot, who decided the explosives did not pose a safety risk as they...
What happened next is not entirely clear. Slovakian authorities say they immediately contacted their counterparts at Dublin Airport to explain the situation, but the Dublin Airport Authority says it did not hear from the Slovakians until Tuesday morning. (According to the Irish media, a telex went to the wrong number.) Slovakian officials described the oversight as a "silly and unprofessional mistake" and apologized to the Irish. But in a statement from the Slovakian Interior Ministry, the government took exception to the arrest of the passenger: "[For an] incomprehensible reason, [the police] took the person into custody and undertook further security...
...experiment using real explosives - and a real passenger. "I've never heard of an incident like this before," says Tim Ripley, a British security expert who writes books about defense issues. "It's very unusual for a civilian to be used unwittingly in these kinds of tests. Normally an airport would use its own staff for tests. So to hide explosives in someone's bag and just hope for the best seems very strange indeed." (Read "Threat of Homegrown Islamic Terrorism May Be Exaggerated...