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Head of Police Tibor Mako Steps Down Over Explosives Incident
Thursday 07 January 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, January 7 (TASR) - Head of the Border and Foreigner Police Tibor Mako resigned from his post because of the explosives scandal in the wake of the botched security test, Interior Minister Robert Kalinak said at a press conference on Thursday.
"Tibor Mako asked to be released from his post and I've accepted," said Kalinak.
Due to a security test that went awry, an RDX explosive was inadvertently smuggled from Poprad-Tatry airport on an airplane to Dublin. According to Kalinak, the entire incident was caused by a 'stupid human mistake', as the police officer responsible made a number of blunders. Meanwhile, the investigation of the case conducted by the Interior Ministry inspection is pending. Kalinak also decided to stop any further security tests of similar kind, and intends to find an alternative training procedure.
Kalinak has refused to step down over the international explosive scandal on his own, nor has he been called on to resign by Premier Robert Fico.
"The deployment of dogs to find explosives represents a tactics widely used at many airports since time immemorial. A similar incident also took place at an airport in France. Slovakia has employed the use of dogs at least since 1989," Kalinak defended the police cynologists.
According to head of Border and Foreigner Police Tibor Mako, the police officer on duty made a severe mistake on January 2, when he forgot to retrieve the explosive from the luggage area. Another mistake was not reporting the blunder to his superiors at once, thereby, the authorities learnt about the incident with a two-day delay.
[Ninety grams of explosive were found in the luggage of a Slovak citizen who boarded a plane in Poprad (Presov region) to Ireland on Saturday. Police at the airport hid samples of explosives in the luggage of several passengers as part of an operation aimed at testing the airport's security procedures. However, 90 grams of the substance became stuck in the straps of the bag of the 49-year-old man and were taken on the plane undetected. - ed. note]
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