Dutch approve use of full body scanners for US-bound flights

THE Netherlands announced yesterday it would immediately begin using full body scanners for flights heading to the United States, issuing a report calling the failed Christmas Day airline bombing a "professional" terror attack.

"It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster," Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst told a news conference in Amsterdam.

She said the US had not wanted these scanners to be used previously because of privacy concerns.

However, she said the Obama administration in Washington now agreed that "all possible measures will be used on flights to the US."

Officials said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, managed to board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport carrying undetected explosives but failed to detonate them.

The plane was carrying more than 300 people.

In its preliminary report, the Dutch government called the plan to blow up the Detroit-bound aircraft "professional" but said its execution was "amateurish."

Abdulmutallab arrived in Amsterdam last Friday from Lagos, Nigeria, on a KLM flight. After a layover of less than three hours, he passed through a security check at the gate in Amsterdam, including a hand baggage scan and a metal detector, and headed to the Northwest flight.

Ter Horst said Abdulmutallab apparently assembled the explosive device, including 80 grams of Pentrite, or PETN, in the Northwest aircraft toilet, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals.

She said the explosives appeared to have been professionally prepared and had been given to Abdulmutallab.

"Pentrite is a very powerful conventional explosive, which is not easy to produce yourself, nor is its production without risk," Ter Horst said. "If you want to detonate it, you have to do that another way than he did. That is why we talk about amateurism."

Abdulmutallab was carrying a valid Nigerian passport and had a valid US visa, the Dutch said. His name also did not appear on any Dutch list of terror suspects.

"No suspicious matters which would give reason to classify the person involved as a high-risk passenger were identified during the security check," Ter Horst said.

Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.

Schiphol has 15 body scanners, but their use has been limited because of privacy objections that they display the contours of passengers' bodies. Neither the European Union nor the US has approved the routine use of the scanners at European airports.

New software eliminates that problem by projecting an image onto a screen, highlighting the area of the body where objects are concealed and alerting security.

At least two scanners have been experimentally using that software since late November and the Dutch said those would be put into use immediately. All other scanners will be upgraded within three weeks so they can be used on flights to the US.

"Our view is that the use of millimeter wave scanners would certainly have helped detect that he had something on his body, but you can never give 100 percent guarantees," Ter Horst said.

Meanwhile, officials told The Associated Press yesterday that a man tried to board a commercial airliner in the Somali capital of Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe in a case bearing chilling similarities to the Detroit airliner plot.

The Somali man was arrested before the November 13 Daallo Airlines flight left.

It was scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai.

A Somali police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect was in Somali custody.

"We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist," said Barise. "We caught him red-handed."