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US Airport Fingerprinting Nabs 30 Criminals in 3 Days
Well, whaddaya know. It's working!
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US screening nets 30 criminals
From correspondents in Paris (AFP)
January 10, 2004
AMERICA'S controversial foreign visitor screening program has nabbed 30 criminals in its first three days of operation, an official said yesterday.
At the same time, European police pressed their hunt for a suspect who failed to turn up for an Air France flight to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. An Afghan national named only by French security officials as Abdulaye had been booked on the first of the cancelled flights from Paris, but he never checked in. French authorities confirmed the man was being sought but said it was premature to speak of links with the al-Qaeda network.
In Washington, a senior US Homeland Security official said that during the first three days after US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology - or US-VISIT - was installed at 115 US airports, more than 83,000 international passengers had been photographed and fingerprinted.
"Among those we have had 30 criminal hits," Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson said.
Mr Hutchison cited one case, that of a Salvadoran national stopped late yesterday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
"When he presented his travel documents everything seemed fine but the biometric identification sounded a warning," he said.
"Turned out he had used false documents to enter the United States illegally 12 times in the past year and had committed some minor offences."
By 2005, every land, sea and air port of entry to US territory will have the photographic and fingerprinting technology. All US visas and passports will eventually include photos and fingerprints - called "biometric identifiers".
Mr Hutchinson stressed that the system could process arriving travellers in seconds.
Some countries have reacted with annoyance and Brazil responded by introducing similar requirements for all US visitors.
Mr Hutchinson welcomed screening by other countries, but said it should be done "in the name of security, not in the name of retaliation".
Meanwhile, Mr Hutchinson's boss, US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, told the BBC in London that "a stream of intelligence" had pointed to a possible air attack on the US during the Christmas-New Year period.
"It talks about attacks equal to or greater than those that occurred on September 11, talked about these attacks occurring in a time frame that covered our traditional holiday period and it also included reference to aviation," Mr Ridge said.
A global air security alert forced the cancellation of several flights over the past two weeks, including six Air France connections between Paris and Los Angeles on December 24 and 25, and delayed successive flights from London to Washington.
Agence France-Presse
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FLUSHED THE JOHNS!
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