Ahern signals support for airport body scanners

Irish minister of justice Dermot Ahern said he would support the introduction of body scanners at Irish airports. Ahen made the statement during a two-day informal meeting of European justice and home affairs ministers in the Spanish city of Toledo.

The Irish Times’s Jane Walker reports that at the meeting, Ahern also accepted a public apology from the Slovak government to over an incident in which a Slovak national returning to Ireland after Christmas unknowingly carried explosive material into the country as part of an exercise by the Slovak intelligence services. Jan Skoda, the Slovak ambassador to Spain and acting head of their delegation, apologized to Ahern for the incident.

Ahern said he understood that communications difficulties compounded the incident and that the incident should serve as “a wake-up call” over how it was possible to board an aircraft carrying explosive material.

The minister said that Ireland would play its role in dealing with the terror threat. “If additional measures are required either in exchange of passenger information or better technology, then we should take them. We need to fast-track exchange of information which can play a very important role in defeating international terrorism. Law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from increased exchange of information, particularly within the EU, or with better scanning devices and technology,” he said.

“International co-operation and co-ordination of all our efforts, particularly with the United States, is essential to meet the terrorists head-on. The clear message we must send out to them is that they will not win over the rule of democratic nations. We must, and will, stand together against those who would kill indiscriminately to further their aims.”

Walker notes that Britain and France are leading calls for the introduction of passenger name recognition — the exchange of passenger information and profiling. Ahern said Ireland broadly supported the move.

More discussions on the controversial issue of whole-body scanners will be held at the meeting of EU transport ministers in A Coruña next month. U.S. DHS secretary Janet Napolitano joined the EU ministers for their talks yesterday and signed an agreement on co-operation and exchange of information to combat international terrorism in the air.

She briefed the ministers about the attempt to bomb a passenger flight bound for the United States on Christmas Day. “Although the Amsterdam-Detroit flight was an American plane, it was an international attack which did not only target US citizens. One hundred of the passengers on that flight were nationals from 17 other countries. Al-Qaeda uses its best brains to find new forms of attack, and we must use our best brains to find ways of combating them,” she said.