Slovakian airport security – or the lack thereof . . .

There are red faces (and, one hopes, some empty desks) in Slovakia tonight. The Daily Mail reports:

A Slovakian man unwittingly carried hidden explosives on board a flight to Dublin after a botched security exercise, Irish officials revealed.

A furious Irish Government demanded that Slovakia explain its actions after the unsuspecting electrician was allowed to carry the explosives on the flight at Poprad-Tatry Airport on Saturday.

The diplomatic row erupted after Slovak airport police randomly planted powerful RDX in the 49-year-old’s bag, but took three days to warn authorities he had unwittingly evaded scanning machines.

Real bomb components were hidden in the luggage of nine unwitting passengers. Eight were detected, but one bag containing around three ounces of RDX plastic explosive traveled undetected through security on to a Danube Wings aircraft.

The bewildered passenger did not find out about the explosives cache until Irish police, acting on a Slovak tip-off, raided his apartment yesterday morning.

. . .

Airport police in Bratislava contacted their counterparts in Dublin about the high-level breach yesterday and gardai were then informed and raided an apartment in Dublin’s north inner city.

The passenger, who it is understood has been living in Ireland for a number of years, knew nothing about it.

Roads around the Dorset Street apartment complex, close to Dublin’s main thoroughfare O’Connell Street, were sealed off for about an hour and a half, with five buildings evacuated as a security cordon was maintained.

The passenger who carried the explosives on the four-hour flight was travelling back to Ireland, where he has been working for three years, after a Christmas break at home.

An army bomb disposal team found the explosives still concealed in his luggage but described them as in a ‘stable state’.

There’s more at the link.

I ask you! Inserting actual explosives into a passenger’s luggage – not someone testing security, but a real passenger – and then letting the plane depart with it on board??? Three ounces of RDX would be more than enough to blow open the fuselage of the plane: and although it’s supposed to be very stable, how do we know what else was packed in the same hold that might act as an accelerant?

Heads should roll for this one. On the other hand, we now have to worry that some dumbass in the TSA hierarchy has just been given another bad idea to test airport security . . .

Peter