Slovakian security surprise

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Security officials at a Slovakian airport planted explosives in a passenger’s luggage without his knowledge as part of a security exercise. They didn’t expect that the passenger would get through security and make it to his destination. The World’s Carol Zall has more.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World. Yesterday we told you about a British journalist who inadvertently ended up on an international flight with a full-sized aerosol can of hairspray in her carryon. Well today we have a story of a man who got on a flight in Slovakia with plastic explosives in his luggage.   He didn’t know there was anything dangerous in his luggage either.  The World’s Carol Zall has more.

CAROL ZALL: It all started this past Saturday as a security exercise at Poprad-Tatry Airport in Eastern Slovakia. Border police there put plastic explosives in a passenger’s luggage to see if sniffer dogs could detect it.  The only problem was, they didn’t tell the passenger what they’d done.

DOUG LAIRD: You know I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. I would never put real explosives in somebody else’s luggage.

ZALL: Doug Laird runs an aviation security consulting firm, and he used to be Security Director with Northwest Airlines. He says Northwest would run security tests at airports, but never without a passenger’s knowledge.

LAIRD: We would place it, we would watch it, and we’d see the test and we’d recover it, but you’d never let it get away for obvious reasons.

ZALL: Okay, so now to back to the security test in Slovakia.  49-year-old Stefan Gonda had no idea that two batches of plastic explosives had been placed in his bag.  Slovakian officials say a sniffer dog did detect the explosives, and a police handler went to remove them from the luggage. But now the story gets a bit fuzzy. Authorities say the official removed one batch of explosives, but he was distracted, and somehow forgot to remove the second batch. Bottom line, Mr. Gonda got on his flight, which was headed for Dublin. The border police did alert the pilot before take off that there were explosives aboard. But the pilot decided it was safe to fly. That’s because the materials could not explode without a detonator. And the pilot did send a telex to Dublin, but sent it to the wrong place.  Irish Times reporter Connor Lally says that people in Ireland are still appalled.

CONNOR LALLY: First of all, people find it absolutely shocking that a police force of any state would plant explosives in the bags of passengers on airlines as part of, you know, some kind of training exercise.

ZALL: And they also find it incredible that when the police in Slovakia realized what had happened, they didn’t immediately inform the police or the airport in Ireland.

TALLY: They basically depended on the pilot on a privately run airline to send a telex to a private firm that actually handles airplanes here in airports to inform them that there were actually plastic explosives on their plane.

ZALL: But the Slovak authorities did call Stefan Gonda to tell him what was in his knapsack.

TALLY: He was completely unaware that the explosives were there, until he received a call from the Slovak police on Monday evening informing him that explosives were actually in his bag and, you know, asking him to go check his bag.

ZALL: Lally says Gonda must have been surprised, especially when after the Slovaks finally did inform the Irish police, he was arrested yesterday.

TALLY: I’m sure he was even far more shocked when the Irish police kicked in his door here on Tuesday morning.  I mean, you know, he was obviously brought in for questioning for a period of about two and a half hours despite the fact that he was totally innocent.

ZALL: Mr. Gonda was released without charge and the Slovak Interior Minister has expressed profound regret over the incident.  For the World, I’m Carol Zall.

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