"EU inspectors expose Warsaw airport security gaps"

Saturday, February 5, 2005

EU inspectors expose Warsaw airport security gaps 


WARSAW (Reuters) - Undercover European Commission inspectors managed to
smuggle a knife and two bomb-like devices past Warsaw airport security
detection equipment and onto an airliner, press reports said on Saturday.

The exercise to test Poland's airport security measures was carried out in
late January in coordination with Poland's Civilian Aviation Office, said
the Warsaw daily Zycie Warszawy under a five-column headline "Disgrace at
Okecie Airport."

An airport spokeswoman said she believed a human oversight rather than
equipment failure was behind the incident.

Posing as passengers, the inspectors carried aboard a large knife taped to
the bottom of a laptop computer and bomb-like props concealed in its
carrying case, the newspaper said.

"The results of the inspection have revealed that security precautions at
Warsaw's Okecie Airport in numerous cases are not in line with EU
directives," Gazeta Wyborcza, another Polish daily, quoted a Civilian
Aviation Office report as saying.

Gazeta Wyborcza said the inspection had turned up 46 different deficiencies
at the airport but declined to reveal them "so as not to jeopardise the
safety of passengers."

"We frequently have inspections but this has never happened before," airport
spokeswoman Edyta Mikolajczyk said.

"Our scanners surely must have detected the contours of something like a
knife, so this must have been a human oversight," she added.


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