WASHINGTON – Air travellers from Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and nine other countries will face full-body pat downs before boarding airliners under new United States security screening procedures targeting foreign passengers.
The procedures, which went into effect on Monday, follow the botched Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound US airliner blamed on a Nigerian man who US officials believe was trained by Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Passengers travelling from or through nations listed as ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ – Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria – as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen will face heightened screening, an Obama administration official said.
Nearly all of those are Muslim countries.
Such passengers will be patted down, have their carry-on luggage searched and could undergo advanced explosive detection or imaging scans, an official told Reuters.
The Transportation Security Administration, the US agency responsible for air security measures, announced the ‘enhanced screening’ procedures, adding that any passengers on US-bound flights could be subjected to random security searches.
The new rules apply to anyone with a passport from any of the 14 countries, and anyone stopping in those countries, the administration official said.
