French police change explosives tactics

French police ordered a halt to their technique of using air travellers’ luggage to hide plastic explosives in exercises designed to train sniffer dogs, a police official said today.

The order came after Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin expressed concern that officers in one such training exercise at Paris’ main airport on Friday had lost track of a traveller’s bag in which a small amount of plastic explosives had been placed.

The explosives could have made it onto one of up to 90 flights leaving Charles de Gaulle Airport, but there was little risk of detonation because the plastic would require special triggers to be set off, officials said.

“The procedures that were used Friday night will no longer be allowed,” said Pierre Bouquin, a spokesman for the Gendarmes, who conducted the training. “We’re going to stop practising this on the bags of travellers” in all of France, he said.

Earlier, Raffarin insisted training must occur “in a way that strictly guarantees the respect of the private life of passengers”, a statement from his office said.

“The fight against terrorism and insecurity is a priority for the government,” the statement said, “but (Raffarin) made clear his concern in the face of the way the training for explosives searches was conducted at Roissy Charles de Gaulle”.

Raffarin said the procedure was “susceptible to making the relevant passenger run a risk in the eyes of foreign authorities when arriving in the destination country”.

Airport police deliberately placed a bag containing 100 to 150 grammes of plastic explosives into a passenger’s luggage early Friday evening, the spokesman said. The luggage was lost on a conveyor belt carrying bags through a restricted area from check-in to planes.

Two police officers faced disciplinary action because of the incident, Bouquin said.

Police didn’t know the bag’s destination and quickly alerted the relevant airlines that one of up to 90 planes that left Paris on Friday evening could be carrying the explosives.

Planes were searched upon arrival in Los Angeles and New York, US officials said.

Bouquin said no passenger had yet reported finding the explosives to French authorities.