"Knives smuggled through Heathrow airport"

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Knives 'smuggled through airport'
Australia - The Perth Sunday Times


BRITISH airport operator BAA had launched an urgent investigation into how
an undercover reporter breached security to smuggle knives and razor blades
through London's busy Heathrow airport, the Daily Express said today.

The British tabloid said BAA had launched the probe after one of its
journalists repeatedly breached security measures to expose what he
described as "alarming flaws".

Dennis Rice wrote in a front-page story published today that he had lied
about his career history in order to secure a job as a baggage handler.

"We are urgently investigating the allegations that potential weapons have
been smuggled through staff security," the paper quoted a BAA spokesman as
saying.

"On every occasion a member of staff enters airside areas they are subject
to the same scrutiny as passengers," the spokesman said.

He said BAA had made all the relevant checks on Rice, including a search for
possible criminal convictions.

As an additional precaution BAA would now carry out an audit of Heathrow's
recently employed staff to ensure relevant procedures had taken place, the
spokesman said.

Rice, who recently spent two-and-a-half weeks working at Heathrow, said
security staff ignored alarms as he strode through metal detectors carrying
blades hidden in his toe capped boots.

"I hid a four-inch blade in a cardboard coffee cup which I even handed to an
unsuspecting security guard to avoid taking it through scanning machines,"
Rice wrote.

"I wandered freely around high secure areas of the airport completely
unchallenged. Shockingly, the reason I was able to breach Heathrow's
security repeatedly in this way was often due to the plain laziness and
ineptitude of security staff manning the scanners."

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