Passenger with batteries hidden in shoes held at Pakistan airport
Passenger with batteries hidden in shoes held at Pakistan airport
10.05.10
https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif
Behind bars: Faiz Mohammad said he bought the shoes in a Karachi market
A passenger was arrested at Pakistan's Karachi airport after electrical circuits and batteries were found in the soles of his tennis shoes.
Officials were investigating what the components could be used for and why they were concealed.
Similar materials can be used to make bombs.
Faiz Mohammad was held last night at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport, said Munir Ahmed, a spokesman for the airport security force.
The materials were detected by a scanner but there were no explosives.
Mr Ahmed said each shoe contained a small circuit connected to two AAA batteries.
Mohammad, a builder bound for Muscat, Oman, on the Thai Airways flight, told investigators he bought the shoes from a market in Karachi and had no idea there were circuits inside.
“The suspect has told us that it was nothing but a massager, but we are looking at all possible angles, including terrorist activities,” said senior police official Tanveer Alam Odho.
Police official Sohail Faiz said: “We have recovered four live batteries and a circuit, with a button to switch it on and off. It is premature to say what he was up to.”
In 2003, British citizen Richard Reid was jailed for life in the US after admitting attempting to blow up a transatlantic jet using bombs hidden in his shoes. He told his trial that he was a “follower of Osama Bin Laden”.
Security in Pakistan has come under greater scrutiny since an alleged Pakistani-trained extremist was accused of a failed car bombing in Times Square last week. US officials have said the Pakistani Taliban were behind the plot.
Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, was the focus of the investigation. Four people with alleged links to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant group affiliated with al Qaeda, have been arrested there.
US attorney-general Eric Holder said: “We know that they helped facilitate it; we know that they helped direct it. And I suspect that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped to finance it. They were intimately involved in this plot.”
Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani descent, is believed to have spent five months in Pakistan before returning to the US in February and preparing his attack.
thisislondon.co.uk
Agents 86 and 99 run into airport security
or the old "telephone in the shoe trick"
