Border and security authorities would be “doing a lot of soul searching” following revelations that a bomb kit was allegedly mailed to Australia by the Islamic State and probably couldn’t be sure that more explosive devices had not come into the country, a leading expert has said.
After the Australian Federal Police revealed that the bomb at the centre of the alleged Sydney plane terror plot had been sent by air cargo from Turkey, a spokeswoman from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said that the scale of mail and air cargo “presents a unique challenge”.
John Coyne, a former AFP transnational crime specialist now with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said that it was impossible to check all items of cargo and mail coming into Australia. Authorities would not know whether other such devices had been sent to Australia.
“A question now will be what other devices were sent through, how many, who to?” Dr Coyne said. “That will be a worrying issue in many people’s minds in domestic and international security. Is this the first time this has happened? How many times has it happened? There is no way of telling.”
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Source: The Sydney Morning Herald.