SLOVAKIA SAID yesterday that a “silly and unprofessional mistake” allowed a passenger to carry explosives on a flight to Dublin, while also sharply criticising Ireland’s handling of the affair.
Slovakia’s interior ministry said police had hidden explosives in two bags at Poprad-Tatry airport on Saturday, as part of “standard sniffer dog training . . . to keep in shape and on alert in real conditions.
“The sniffer dog found one sample, after which the police officer and the dog were called off to a different matter and the officer had forgotten to take out the second sample . . . The police officer made a silly and unprofessional mistake, which turned the good purpose of protecting people into a problem.”
When the error was discovered, the pilot of the 11am Danube Wings flight to Dublin was told that there were explosives on board but that they were not a safety risk.
He decided to continue the flight as planned and Poprad-Tatry airport sent a telex to Dublin airport alerting it to the situation.
“No one was in danger, because the substance without any other components and under the conditions it was stored, is not dangerous,” the ministry insisted.
The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) denied it had received any warning from Slovakia on Saturday, however, saying that it “only became aware of this incident when Slovakian authorities made contact by telephone on Tuesday morning”. The Irish Times understands that a private firm operating at the airport, and not the DAA, received the telex sent from Slovakia on Saturday.
The Slovak interior ministry said police had contacted the passenger, a 49-year-old electrician, who “followed the instructions of the police and found the sample in his luggage on Monday in evening hours. As he was instructed, he waited for the Irish police to come and take the sample from him”.
Slovakia will now scrap such sniffer dog tests and take disciplinary action against those to blame for the fiasco. But Bratislava also questioned Ireland’s response to the incident.
“On Tuesday morning, we contacted the Irish authorities and explained the situation. an incomprehensible reason, they took the person into custody and undertook further security measures,” the interior ministry said.
Col Tibor Mako, the head of the Slovak border guard department that carried out the test, offered his resignation yesterday, but not before aiming another broadside at Dublin.
“People in charge of security at Dublin airport are partly responsible for the incident as well, as they failed to discover the explosives during the luggage check,” he said at a press conference.
The DAA has said there was no breach of security at Dublin airport because security checks at all international airports are conducted only on departing passengers.
Col Mako told The Irish Times that the officer responsible for the lost explosives had informed his superiors about the incident only on Monday, suggesting that he told only airport authorities about it on Saturday. If the officer’s superiors had known about the explosives, they “would have given an order to postpone the flight and take out the sample”, he said.
Slovak interior minister Robert Kalinak has apologised to the unfortunate Slovak electrician.
He has also expressed his “profound regret” over the debacle to the Irish Government.
Security experts condemned the Slovak exercise.
They said that while many countries regularly conduct airport safety tests, most use undercover agents to try to smuggle banned substances through security checks, rather than unwitting civilians.
“The whole idea of putting devices in passenger bags scares the living daylights out of me, frankly,” said aviation safety analyst Chris Yates.
“Anything could happen . . . That bag could go through a different carousel in the airport. You could lose it and you get the situation where you have RDX plastic explosive loaded into the cargo hold of an airplane, flown to another destination and then you have to find the damn thing.”