Word: airports
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Though many questions remained unanswered, Austrian authorities concluded from the interrogation that the terrorists had not intended to commit suicide at the Vienna airport, as the police had first assumed, but instead were plotting a grand spectacle of murder and revenge. They were evidently hoping to take a number of people at the airport hostage, commandeer an El Al jetliner and order it flown to Tel Aviv where, along with an El Al plane seized simultaneously by their accomplices in Rome, they would destroy the aircraft and everyone on board. The action was to have been in retaliation...
Exactly ten minutes after terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports the morning of Dec. 27, the news flashed to Athens international airport, where a scheduled flight of Israel's El Al airline was preparing for takeoff. Moments later, a police dragnet began searching for possible terrorists. For the much criticized Athens facility, where Shi'ite extremists last June boarded TWA Flight 847 before hijacking it to Beirut, times had changed...
Although no terrorist incident occurred, Greek authorities rounded up dozens of Palestinians in Athens for interrogation and deported seven who were carrying false passports. The Greek Foreign Ministry took the unprecedented step of barring all Palestinians from entering the country without special permission. Despite the deft performance, Airport Commander George Papadimitropoulos insisted that there are limits to airport security. Said he: "Can you imagine a Greek family, mother, aunt, grandma, uncles, who came to see off their son, being told they...
Such draconian restrictions could well become commonplace. Across Western Europe last week, special precautions went into effect in response to the Rome and Vienna bloodbaths. Austrian officials strengthened the special antiterrorist unit that guards Vienna's Schwechat Airport but ruled out isolating the El Al check-in area in a remote corner of the airport because, as one spokesman put it, the airline did not want to operate in "a ghetto." Highly visible armed police patrolled El Al check-in areas at Frankfurt, Munich and Paris airports. Passengers on the twice-weekly El Al flight between Tel Aviv and Madrid...
...violence-prone Middle East, the Cairo airport is a virtual armed camp. Only ticketed passengers are admitted to the terminal. Steel barriers separate check-in counters from the rest of the building, which is under constant guard. Passengers undergo three passport checks. Hand luggage is searched, and checked baggage must be identified. Passengers are patted down before being bused to their planes. A final inspection is conducted at the aircraft door...