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A journalist of the Dutch TV channel SBS6 has demonstrated that you can board a plane at Amsterdam airport with explosive liquids in your bag. If you travel to a non-Schengen country you can buy tax free liquor past passport control, but before the security check and leave the area.
This is what the journalist did. Outside the terminal he exchanged the bottle’s content for a fake explosive. Next, he went to the tax free shop, paid for the bottle and took it wrapped and sealed through the security check.
Easier would have been to go directly to the tax free shop with his own bottle, but that is less exciting and may sell fewer advertisements on TV. But how relevant is the TV channel’s action?
Explosives expert H. Schöyer, former head of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Propulsion Laboratory, does not understand why the rules for liquids have been implemented in the first place. In the Dutch journal Nature, Science & Technique he already said in 2007: “Politicians want to say: I try to protect you. But they only play to the gallery. It gives a false sense of security.”
According to Schöyer there are two kinds of liquid explosives: nitrated alcohols and nitromethanes. The first are so unstable that they already explode before the terrorist will get at the airport.
However, it is difficult to set off the second kind of liquid explosives. Therefore, they need a detonator, which is easy to detect at security checks.
Nearly all liquid explosives are being produced on the basis of nitrogen, which dogs can easily detect.
Thus, a terrorist will prefer an explosive that is not based on nitrogen, for example triacetonetriperoxide (TATP). But in this case he will face the problem that it can already explode due to some friction.
“There are simply no liquids that are really suitable for blowing up a plane”, says Schöyer. “Liquid explosives are no threat. People are a threat.”
This is exactly what the International Air Transport Association (IATA) wrote to the US secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on December 30, 2009: “Instead of looking for "bad" things - nail clippers and rogue bottles of shampoo - security systems need to focus on finding bad people.”
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