I feel a bit bad about posting this, what with the popularity of French-bashing amongst some elements around here, but on the other hand it’s too silly not to.
OK, so it’s ‘only’ 150 grams, and there was no detonator, but still. Needless to say, this particular dog-training method will not be used in the future.
Meanwhile, uh, if you’ve just returned home from your trip to Paris and you open up your luggage and find a small bag with some gray plasticky stuff in it, would you mind mailing it back to le Surete, please? TIA.
So, somewhere in the world there’s a traveler who for the next few trips will trip the “sniffer” device every time s/he goes thru the airport? Or whom it’s an even chance that s/he was led from Customs in an uncomfortable manner upon arrival and is STILL to this day trying to give an explanation?
What really bakes my noodle is that the cops apparently didn’t bother to note the name and address off the hapless passenger’s luggage tag at the time they opened his or here luggage. What complete dunderheads.
I believe the DEA stopped using this method to train their dogs about ten years ago. ISTR a Wall Street Journal reporter opened his luggage and found two pounds of cocaine that the DEA had stuffed in there, and the dog missed.
I imagine that engendered some mixed emotions before it was sorted.
Bonus! Christmas comes early! No, Waitaminute, when do the Columbian drug-lords who used me as a mule burst through the door with AKs? quickly goes through several grams Columbian drug lords? I’ll kick their asses! With my bare hands! No wait, obvously I’m being set up by the toy industry for that expose I did about choking hazards. Oh my god, I’m gonna die.
Didn’t someting similar happen either in the U.S. or U.K in which an unloaded pistol was put in someone’s carry-on? IIRC, they found it when they got to their hotel then called the police. It was similarly for a “training exercise”.
Ah, my mistake it was neither the U.S nor the U.K. It was the Israeli airline El Al and a passenger who travelled to Frankfurt who found a pistol (a non-firing replica type thing) in his luggage. I think I read the story on Beeb, but can only find yucky cites for it now.
In any case, the stroy was from back in March, 2004.
