Lack of airfreight screening poses global security threat
SYDNEY: Sophisticated bomb-makers can strike anywhere, anytime by simply sending IED’s via air freight, according to Sydney-based counter terrorism and security consultants, Homeland Security Asia Pacific.
“This delivery system isn’t new. It simply deploys the same MO used by terrorists to down a Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie, on 21 December 1988, with 270 casualties,” said Homeland Security’s CEO Roger Henning.
“The world hasn’t learnt anything from the Pan Am catastrophe, which cost lives and put a great airline out of business. The only difference is the explosives in the latest IEDs from Yemen were hidden in printer cartridges along with SIM cards, instead of inside a transistor radio used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103.
“Airfreight is all about uncomplicated speed of delivery, with tracking technology enabling the sender, including terrorists, to know the exact location of a package at any time during its entire journey.
“The world airfreight industry has grown at a phenomenal rate, since the early seventies, yet the major players don’t have the capability to screen packages prior to a flight, or on arrival at a destination. Small packages have been used to deliver contraband including drugs, weapons, counterfeit money and counterfeit goods.
“All the effort has gone into front-of-house security screening of passengers in airport terminals, yet vast quantities of airfreight travels on regular scheduled flights, in cargo holds below the passengers.
“There is no media or political pressure focused on the airfreight issue, to help law enforcement, intelligence agencies, airlines and airports to deal with the global threat posed by airfreight consignments.
“Airfreight is free of any oversight and remains unregulated. There is a need for immediate action to mitigate the risks”, Mr Henning said.
“Unless a cell phone has a timing device attached, to turn it on, it will ‘pole’ continually to the nearest tower. A way around this risk is to install low-cost scanning devices, used to ‘clean’ boardrooms, in all commercial passenger and freight aircraft. A quick sweep would take two to five minutes prior to take-off to establish if an activated cell phone is on board.
“Terrorists have enormous patience and are very inventive. An IED delivered into Sydney or any other major airport on a freighter can be detonated remotely. An explosion could quickly engulf other aircraft parked alongside and spread through a terminal. A closure of Sydney airport would cost the National and State economies around $1-billion-a-week.
“The big worry now is the threat of copy-cats adopting the ‘Yemen method’ of IED delivery”, he said.
HSAP Directors Roger Henning and Michael Roach, addressed the IED risk, in an airport security workshop, presented to the Australian Airports Association conference in Adelaide, last week. Their warning came just two days before bombs were flown out of Yemen to Dubai and the UK.
“Airports are designated ‘places of mass gathering' by the Australian Government, requiring much higher levels of security, yet tarmacs remain devoid of security. Existing security is stove-pipe and very few people know what to do, how to act or who to report to in an emergency of any sort - let alone a bombing’, Mr Henning said.
Mr Henning said his company is about to roll out a new totally integrated airport workforce security awareness program.