How very ... odd.
CNN.com - U.S. probe into Heathrow arrest - Jan. 15, 2004: U.S. officials are investigating how a Sudanese airline passenger may have carried suspected ammunition onto a flight from Washington to London. The man was arrested at Britain's Heathrow Airport Wednesday after the suspected ammunition was discovered as he tried to board a flight to Dubai. Metropolitan Police stopped the man during a routine security check at Heathrow. Scotland Yard said he was not carrying any weapons. In Washington, a U.S. government official said the man had a few bullets in his pocket. The official said it was unclear if the bullets were live ammunition and whether the passenger got them upon arrival in London or before his departure for London from Washington's Dulles Airport.
Terror arrest questions US airport security (The Scotsman UK, Thu 15 Jan 2004): ... A MAN accused of carrying ammunition on a flight from Washington to London was arrested last night on suspicion of terrorism offences. The 45-year-old Sudanese-born passenger was taken from Heathrow to a central London police station to be interviewed by anti-terrorist branch officers. The passenger was initially held for allegedly carrying bullets as he went through a routine security check in transit to boarding a connecting flight to Dubai. Scotland Yard said he was later arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He had not been picked up by security at Washington’s Dulles airport, where he boarded Virgin flight VS022. The man was missed there despite the route between London and Washington having been publicly identified as a potential target for terrorists in recent weeks.
Another interestingly peculiar side note: not one word about this in the Washington Post, as far as I can tell.
That aside, one does have to wonder about security in the nation's airports, or at least in that airport. They've been searching through checked luggage, making everyone take off their shoes, having the odd hysterical fit over belt buckles and arch supports ... and yet somehow, they miss actual bullets. Since it was in a coat pocket, he probably had to take off the coat and put it on the conveyer belt for x-ray; metal detection as such would likely not have had anything to do with the issue. So someone likely looked at the x-ray image of bullets in this man's pocket and either didn't know what they saw, or, possibly saw them and realized what they were, but decided that since the man had no weapons and no reasonable access to them on the aircraft, that they were no threat or particular reason to worry. Which might be a reasonable exercise in judgement, but unfortunately, exercised in a situation in which the screener's judgement is not supposed to be used in that manner. In any event, given that he was taking weaponry, however unusable, onto a commercial flight -- let alone a flight that had run into repeated delays in the past month due to suspected terrorist attempts to board -- he should even now be mouldering in some federal prison somewhere, having been detained under the PATRIOT Act.
Of course, there's no actual error tracking built into our system. There's no identification of who is being scanned at that time, or any way to connect the scan to a particular time or particular screener. Whatever error was made, whether of commission or judgement, there's no real way to track who did it or how it happened. One wonders what, if anything, TSA will do to prevent this happening again. Given that it doesn't seem to be getting any play in DC itself and relatively little coverage nationally, Congress isn't likely to do their normal strut and posturing on the topic, so TSA's drive to fix the problem -- especially given their miserable budget situation and ongoing personnel cuts -- is likely to be somewhat low.
Another side note: if we weren't living in the age of PATRIOT-related detentions and constitutional rights violations, Section 41 of Britain's Terrorism Act 2000 would seem perhaps a tad draconian. It would also seem far fetched to arrest a person under the Terrorism Act when there was no evidence that terrorism was intended, nor did he do anything whatsoever. (Frankly, given the situation, you have to wonder if maybe he had the bullets for some reason prior to his trip, and he simply forgot that they were there.)
Posted by iain at January 15, 2004 11:33 AM
