Watch your luggage in Slovak airports
January 16, 2010
Next time you fly through Tatry-Poprad airport or Bratislava airport, it would be best not to think too much about your luggage and what might be happening to it.On January 2nd, Slovak security officials planted explosives in the luggage of 9 passengers, wthout, of course, their knowledge. The purpose of the plants was to test how effective the screening procedures were. The procedures were good enough to pick up 8 of the 9 packages but one completely innocent passenger carried his explosives all the way to Dublin. Dublin! Outside the US or the UK, there cannot be many places where the reaction to explosives being carried aboard a plane would have a more violent reaction. The explosives were so well hidden that the passenger didn't find them when he unpacked his luggage. When the Slovak authorities told their Irish counterparts – three days later it must be noted – the Irish Army promptly cordoned off the passenger's house, arrested him and held him in custody for several hours. If the passenger had been flying to the US, he would still be in Guantanamo.
A spokeswoman for the Slovak Interior Ministry said that Dublin had been warned and that the passenger himself was told after he arrived, which makes it all the more extraordinary that his house was cordoned off. Perhaps the Irish Army simply carried on with the exercise?
There are troubling aspects to this fiasco; the unwitting passenger, a Mr Gonda, is probably on the watch lists of every country and his name will by now be buried deep in the bowels of innumerable data bases with no hope of ever getting it wiped off. And of course, the detection systems didn't detect the explosives.
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