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Officials call airport duty-free shops a security risk

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
Officials call airport duty-free shops a security risk
Photo: DPA

German security and aviation officials on Thursday said duty-free shops in airports pose a security risk as they sell potentially dangerous items like razors, cigarette lighters and flammable alcohol and perfume.

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"Having passed through security checks, potential attackers can get everything they need to make a bomb in duty-free shops and restaurants," Rainer Wendt, German police union chief, told the daily Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

He said the European Union should "introduce as quickly as possible an EU-wide ban on selling potentially dangerous items like alcohol, perfume and similar things."

Wendt also said it was absurd that metal cutlery was available in airport restaurants and that in some cases cleaning chemicals were lying around "that a resourceful person could make a bomb with."

He told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that security lapses at European airports

were "so bad I don't know where to start."

The Tagesspiegel daily cited a spokesman for the German pilot's union Cockpit and a security expert from Cottbus University, Wolfgang Spyra, as agreeing that some of the items on sale in duty free posed a potential risk.

The comments came amid calls around the world to tighten security after Nigerian man with suspected links to Al-Qaida allegedly came close to blowing up a US airliner on December 25 with explosive chemicals on his person.

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