A security procedure at eastern Slovakia’s Poprad-Tatry airport went awry when a passenger obliviously carried explosive material in his backpack on a flight to Dublin.
Plastic explosives were planted in the luggage of the unlucky male passenger, a forty-nine year old Slovak returning to his residence in Dublin on Saturday, January 2, after his Christmas holiday.
The man, who has been living in Dublin for the past three years, had two plastic explosives planted in his luggage in a bid to test the efficiency of new sniffer dogs in the airport.
However, the sniffer dogs found only one of the packages in which the explosives were concealed, and officers who became distracted failed to remove the other. The passenger, unaware of this, then boarded the 11am flight to Dublin.
The Slovakian government issued a statement explaining that a telex had been sent to the authorities in Dublin informing them of the situation. However, Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) claimed that they received no telex until the following Tuesday morning.
It is now believed that a private company operating Dublin airport received the telex, not the DAA who only received information about the incident on Tuesday, January 5 and immediately informed the Garda Síochána. The Slovak’s home on Lower Dorset Street was raided and the surrounding area closed off and evacuated for over an hour. The man was arrested at the flat and detained for three hours at Mountjoy Garda station until the Garda were satisfied that he was innocent in the matter.
Slovakian Police chief Tibor Mako expressed his apologies, “We are very sorry that a good effort to test the security of civilian air transport turned out so badly.”
