Police admit airport car park bomb errors
25.04.11
The PSNI has admitted that no security cordons were put in place following three separate warnings of a dissident republican car bomb at Belfast International Airport, the Belfast Telegraph reports. The bomb was then left in the car park undetected for 906 days, during this time the then US President George W Bush flew into the airport where he was met by ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The queen and a number of other high profile dignitaries also used the airport whist the bomb was in the car park.
Following reports by the Belfast Telegraph that the bomb lay undetected in the airport’s long-stay car park for two-and-a half-years, Chief Constable Matt Baggott told the Policing Board that police received three separate warnings that a device had been planted. He said the first warning contained little information, the second call gave details of a vehicle that were wrong and the third identified a vehicle by make and model only.
The Belfast Telegraph revealed last month that the pipe-bomb type device had been left in a car at the long-stay car park on May 7, 2008. It was not discovered until October 30, 2010 when airport staff became suspicious of the car as they went about the process of removing it from the car park for non payment of fees. The bomb failed to detonate because of a fault with a timer.
Policing Board member Jimmy Spratt described the incident as a ‘frightening security blunder’.
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