Counter Terror Gazette

Pepto-Bismol: giving the lawmakers an upset stomach

25 Oct 2010

Like many Europeans, I took a vacation this summer and had a wonderful two weeks trying to “get away from it all” in Rhode Island and Iceland (highly recommended). Early in the morning of my first day back, I was brought swiftly back to reality when it emerged that two men had been arrested on their arrival in Amsterdam off a United Airlines flight from Chicago. The benefits of my trip to the beach at Narragansett and the Icelandic geysers, waterfalls and thermal pools were short lived!

Admittedly prior to establishing the full facts of the case, my blood pressure rose as the initial story broke. One of those arrested, Ahmed Mohammed Nasser al Soofi, had been identified as warranting further examination as he checked in for his trip in Birmingham, Alabama. His heavy clothing worn in the height of the summer and his behaviour resulted in his being subject to search. Within his checked luggage screeners found a strange item consisting of a mobile phone taped to watches and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

This was yet the latest example of passenger profiling identifying a potential threat to a flight whilst screening machines, or their operators, had failed. Let’s face it, aside from aviation security instructors and red teams testing the effectiveness of security measures for industry purposes, why should any passenger carry such an item in their baggage? Furthermore, it was a passenger who also carried the unusually large sum of $7000 in cash on him…and a knife and box-cutter! All credit to the behaviour detection officer who decided al Soofi warranted further inspection.

The Pepto-Bismol device did not test positive for explosives so al Soofi was permitted to continue with his check-in process and board his flight to Chicago, with the Pepto-Bismol device in the hold. Carrying quantities of cash and strange-looking objects are not criminal acts but the decision to let such an item fly, whilst we are continuing to confiscate gallons of obviously harmless liquids from patently law-abiding individuals at checkpoints, is indefensible. How much more so, when the passenger’s routing was to The Netherlands and onwards to Yemen?

And how often are such ill-judged decisions reached? We only know about this incident because al Soofi ended up being separated from his bag in Chicago. He was supposed to fly to Amsterdam via Washington-Dulles yet was put on a direct flight to Amsterdam when he missed his flight to Dulles, allegedly due to a gate change. His bag continued as tagged and it was only when al Soofi didn’t board the United flight in Washington that alarm bells started to ring, his bag re-searched and the Dutch authorities notified. Mr al Soofi and the passenger seated next to him, Hezzam Abdullah Thabi al Murisi, who had also missed his flight to Washington-Dulles were to be met on arrival. MORE ONLINE