Officer nabbed for ‘bomb’

A POLICE officer was arrested on Friday afternoon in connection with Wednesday’s bomb scare at the Hosea Kutako International Airport.

The Namibian Chief of Police, Inspector General Sebastian Ndeitunga, on Saturday informed the media that a senior member of the Police’s aviation security unit was arrested in connection with the suspicious item found at the airport. A day earlier, the Police chief confirmed that the device found in a laptop case on the conveyor belt while officers were scanning the luggage on Wednesday morning was an ‘explosive simulation training device’.Ndeitunga said the device did not contain any explosives but otherwise had all the ingredients of a terrorist bomb. He said the device found in the bag consisted of a wooden platform covered with a piece of carpet, with a hole that contained a detonator linked to two batteries. ‘From the batteries to the timer and the charge, all it needed was explosives,’ Ndeitunga said, adding that the Police’s bomb squad had to disarm the device in case it was a real bomb.The Police also discovered a tag on the device linking it to Larry Coppello Incorporated, an American-based company that manufactures the training devices. Ndeitunga said the Namibian authorities had not sanctioned a bomb drill and regarded what happened as illegal and those involved will be prosecuted.He praised the airport officers for being on high alert all the time and detecting the device on the conveyor belt. The Namibian understands that the arrested Police officer was spotted on the closed-circuit TV system at the airport. He has not yet been charged but is scheduled to appear in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court today. The device was found in a laptop case that was ready to be loaded on board Air Berlin Flight AB7377 en route to Munich, Germany. The incident took place around 10h00 on Wednesday morning and the flight that was carrying 295 passengers and 10 crew was delayed for about five hours.The case in which the object was found was not tagged or labelled, making it difficult to trace who it belonged to.After the discovery of the device the flight captain, who had his passengers already seated for take-off, was informed and taxied the plane to a secure location on the airport premises.The passengers were asked to disembark and were taken to the airport’s old terminal, where they were kept while the Police tried to match all the luggage to their owners.The incident caused international alarm to the extent that the German government sent officers to assist with the investigation and the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also flew members in to assist.Referring to international reports that the scare could have been a test of airport security measures, Ndeitunga said neither the US nor the German government had admitted authorising such a test. He reiterated that Namibian authorities regard what happened as illegal and the investigation will continue to bring those responsible to book.Concern about the possibility of international flights being targeted by terrorists rose last month when two mail bombs were discovered while being sent on cargo planes from Yemen to the US. One of them went through a German airport before being found in Britain.The Windhoek incident came as Germany already was on edge after Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere raised the country’s terrorist threat level, saying intelligence services had received a tip from an unspecified country about a suspected attack planned for the end of November.In comments published on Friday in Germany’s Bild newspaper, Germany’s federal police president said the terrorist threat facing the nation was ‘more serious than ever before.’ – Additional reporting by Associated Press

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