We know one thing about the latest terrorist attack in Turkey. The suicide bombers struck not inside Istanbul Ataturk Airport but outside, where people were queuing at the first checkpoint, to be security-screened so they could then go inside.
That only served to make them an easy target, warns Australian security expert Neil Fergus.
Mr Fergus is the chief executive of Intelligent Risks. He has advised the Australian Government on airport security, including his contribution to the Wheeler Review in 2005.
“The fundamental thing about airport security is, where you put the control point – or the checkpoint – is where you put the vulnerability,” Mr Fergus told SBS. “So even if you move the security screening outside the first layer, you’re moving the vulnerability outside. You’re displacing the potential point of attack.
“What you really want to do is have an efficient intelligence apparatus that gives you forewarning of attacks and gives you an opportunity to interdict the potential attackers.
“That’s in a perfect world. It is a very imperfect world, as we’ve seen this morning in Instanbul. And the reality is moving the checkpoint outside has just moved the point of attack to outside.”
Mr Fergus was yet to see the full circumstances of the Istanbul atrocity, but attackers in Moscow and India had similarly taken advantage of checkpoints outside airports.
The challenge, he said, was to introduce “filters” of surveillance outside – well-trained officers watching the approaches – without impeding the “passage of people through gateway airports”.
Creating a “stand-off” for vehicles was important. “Because the greatest risk is not by a personal-borne improvised explosive device – that’s a PBEID – it’s from a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, a VBIED.”
Security screening of passengers at Australian airports happens inside its airports – after check-in. Doesn’t that carry its own risks?
“Well, it does,” says Mr Fergus, “but it’s a case of assessing where the risks are and how you best mitigate them.”
The suicide bombers who killed 19 people at Brussels Airport in March detonated their devices at the check-in counters. Some observers protested at the time that they should never have gained access to the airport with explosives.
Mr Fergus argues: “If you’re talking about the issue specifically in Brussels, what you had is a catastrophic failure of policing and intelligence services that had been given credible and in some cases corroborated intelligence that an attack was being planned, and [they] hadn’t had the wherewithal or the skills or experience to counter it.”
Mr Fergus was among experts who contributed to the Wheeler Review in 2005, when Australia’s federal and state governments accepted its recommendations and the federal police were given an “an enormous sum of money” to boost airport security.
“I can’t vouchsafe that the resources are still there but there’s no reason to believe they are not still there and doing what they were funded and intended to do.”
Sixty million people passed through Istanbul Ataturk last year, making it the world’s 11th busiest airport. Short of shutting down airports, do citizens of the modern world have to accept the risks of air travel?
“As a professional who’s worked in this field for 35 years, I do not accept we have to live with these risks,” Mr Fergus said. “We can mitigate them. We can’t live in a risk-free world … but with appropriate planning ... the risk can be managed down to what I would regard as an acceptable level.
“Anyone who is a particularly determined, trained and equipped attacker will find somewhere across the spectrum of aviation assets, internationally let alone nationally, to find somewhere to attack. That goes without saying. But we have a fairly robust aviation regime in Australia that should give us confidence.”
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