Security upgrade call for airports

Sunday Times 10jun03

SECURITY at Australia's airports needed an urgent upgrade following claims a former baggage handler at Sydney airport had links to al-Qaeda, the Transport Workers' Union (TWU) said today. The call came as terrorism expert Clive Williams said people working at airports should undergo vigorous security checks before being cleared to go near aircraft.

The former baggage handler, Bilal Khazal, was named in a report by the United States intelligence agency CIA as someone associated with al-Qaeda, the group believed responsible for the September 11 attacks on the US.

An ABC Four Corners program screened last night said a CIA report alleged Mr Khazal trained in Afghanistan in 1998 and worked for Qantas until a security review shortly before the 2000 Olympics.

TWU state secretary Tony Sheldon today said the revelations should be "a wake up call for everyone who has anything to do with security at all of Australia's airports".

Since December there had been more than six separate security breaches at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport, including unauthorised access to secure areas and the discovery of suspicious devices, he said in a statement.

"In spite of these breaches, however, there is still no single co-ordinating or responsible body for security checks, standards and arrangements," he said.

"Individual companies are largely being left to their own devices and the Macquarie Bank run Airport Authority refuses to accept it has a direct responsibility.

"The terrifying thing is that nobody really knows what is happening at the airport or across the industry."

Mr Khazal now runs an Internet site for the Islamic Youth Movement in Sydney and was allegedly planning attacks on US interests in Venezuela and the Philippines.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today Khazal had been deemed a threat to Australia's security and his passport had been revoked.

Mr Downer said Mr Khazal was appealing the decision before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT).

Meanwhile Mr Williams, the director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, called for vigorous security checks

"I think it is a problem that many of the people who work on the air site at airports haven't been sufficiently cleared and it has traditionally been an area where there's a high turnover of staff," Mr Williams told ABC Radio.

"That certainly does concern me because obviously if you wanted to do something to an aircraft, then if you got somebody you can collude with on the air site, that's really a major security problem.

"We need to clear the people that work on the air site, they should be put through a security clearance process and we shouldn't be employing people whose backgrounds we're not able to check.

"I think that there needs to be a more rigorous approach to that."

Mr Sheldon said the allegations surrounding Mr Khazal alarmed him and he questioned whether there were other people with terrorist links working at Australian airports.

He said there was a good case that people working at airports should undergo security screening.

"There is certainly screening of people going into the police service, there's security screening in a whole series of ways that occur now," Mr Sheldon told ABC Radio.

"The only people I have heard of having security passes taken off them have been, unfortunately, union officials from the Transport Workers' Union for highlighting their security concerns over the last two years.

"But everybody else seems to still get access and there doesn't seem to be a practical way that the Government has stepped in to try and oversee this."