It would be interesting to know who serviced those planes at Manchester Airport-- bet you anything his name is Mohamed.
"tried to enter the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led administration!!!
Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:04 AM ET By Michael Georgy BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Four Arab men posing as journalists were arrested this week when explosives residue was detected on them as they tried to enter the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led administration, a senior U.S. army officer said.
The officer, a top security official in the compound which hosts news conferences given by senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and houses the U.S. consulate, said explosives were found in the men's hotel room after the arrests on Sunday.
They were posing as employees of an international television company and carried fake identification cards and were trying to drive a van into the compound when they were arrested, he said.
"The IDs looked real. But when we called the organization and asked if they were employees, they said they had not heard of them," the army officer, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.
Scores of Western, Iraqi and Arab journalists as well as Iraqi employees of the U.S.-led administration enter the complex each week after tight security checks. The area, part of the heavily fortified "Green Zone" in Baghdad, is often hit by mortar attacks.
"The four who were arrested may have just been gathering information on the compound or maybe they were just scouting it out. This case is serious," the officer said. He declined to comment on the nationality of the men.
U.S. military officials say foreign fighters are heavily involved in bombings gripping Iraq, including deadly attacks at the gates of the Green Zone that have killed dozens of Iraqis queuing up for work inside. One of the checkpoints at the compound includes an itemizer, a high-tech machine that scans equipment such as cameras for bomb residue. Some people who accidentally pick up explosives residue, such as journalists who cover bombings, sometimes set off the machine.
But the senior army officer said his troops arrest three to four people per week in cases similar to the four Arab men seen as security threats. The U.S. military said explosive devices have been found inside the green zone but there have been no reports of bombings inside the area that includes palaces formerly belonging to toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
"The last time there was a bomb just outside here we tested the machine to make sure it works. Everybody that was near the bomb site that passed through here set off the system. It worked," the officer said. Link to Article