Body Scans Bound For Airports

[Jacaylbaro]

The Netherlands and Nigeria are to begin using body scanners on US-bound flights following the attempted bombing of a plane over Detroit.

 

The hi-tech devices will be installed at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport within three weeks, Dutch interior minister Guusje Ter Horst told a news conference in The Hague.

 

Later, an aviation official in Nigeria said the country's international airports would be equipped with the scanners in the new year.

 

Civil Aviation Authority chief Harold Demuren said: "Not many airports in the world are operating them right now, but Nigeria is determined because of the new face of the threat we are seeing, to acquire them."

 

The Dutch government also denied reports it had information on Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, who tried to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day.

 

The 23-year-old passed through security and metal detectors at Schipol, but was still able to board the plane with explosives hidden in his underwear.

 

Ms Horst said the new full-body wave scanners are able to alert customs officials to non-metal objects in and around the body, so that a full body search can take place.

 

She conceded this would pose privacy issues, but said this needed to be balanced against the safety of passengers.

 

Mutallab was travelling on an Italian passport and spent several hours in the airport lounge before boarding the jet.

 

He started his journey in Nigeria and connected through Amsterdam.

 

Dutch agents are studying CCTV footage at the airport in an attempt to find the plotters after an al Qaeda group based in Yemen claimed responsibility for the failed blast.

 

Ms Horst branded the attempted attack "amateurish" but added: "It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster."

 

Mutallab apparently assembled the device, including 80 grams of PETN, in the aircraft toilet and then intended to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals.

 

She added: "No suspicious matters which would give reason to classify the person involved as a high-risk passenger were identified during the security check."

 

US President Barack Obama has attacked the "systemic failure" in his own intelligence system that allowed the Nigerian to board the US-bound plane.

 

He said the alleged terrorist's own father had warned about his son's extremist views but this information had not been properly distributed among US security agencies.

 

American security services reportedly received intelligence weeks ago that "a Nigerian" in Yemen was planning a terrorist attack.

 

Meanwhile, it has emerged that a man tried to board a plane in Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe similar to those allegedly used by Mutallab.

 

The Somali man was arrested before the Daallo Airlines flight took off for the northern Somali city of Hargeisa.

 

"We don't know whether he's linked with al Qaeda or other foreign organisations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said a Somali police spokesman.