We Wish You A Merry Checkpoint: and secure cargo new year

22 Dec 2010

The media is awash with tales of passenger woe at security checkpoints. We’ve had a mother who had expressed breast milk for her baby detained, a cancer patient being covered in urine when a screener displaced his urostomy bag, a wheelchair passenger sitting in her underwear and many an upset crewmember feeling that the invasive security procedures are overkill. In the United States, the pat-down debate is alive and kicking with passengers claiming to have been groped, molested or abused by over-zealous agents. Many of the stories are, quite simply, ridiculous and demonstrate that aviation security checkpoints are a little like Santa Claus…something we love to believe in but which we know is a myth.

It was hardly surprising that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) opted to target cargo flights this October. Long regarded as one of Achilles’ two vulnerable heels – the other being the threat from employees within the industry – the cargo security system is known to be deficient and to rely on superficial inspections and vast quantities of paperwork with various entities attesting to the fact that consignments have been subject to appropriate security controls.

On 29th October disaster was averted thanks to Saudi Arabian intelligence, having been tipped off by an AQAP operative, notifying their American colleagues that parcels had been sent on FedEx and UPS flights to Chicago from Yemen. The packages were being sent to addresses that were actually synagogues – the Or Chadash, which is a lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual Jewish congregation, and to an inactive orthodox community. It would appear that the plotters had used an out-of-date directory as neither address currently housed Jewish prayer halls, but it would also seem that the packages were never supposed to reach their destinations. In fact, although the addresses were of synagogues, the addressees were enemies of Islam. One was Diego Deza, the Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition, who is said to have used sadistic interrogation methods on Muslim and Jewish converts to Christianity who he suspected were still practicing their original faith. The other was Reynald Krak, otherwise known as Renaud de Châtillon, who was a French knight of the Second Crusade who was particularly cruel to Muslims and who was eventually executed by Saladin. MORE ONLINE

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