UK airports to get full body scanners in anti-terror fight

Full body scanners will be put into UK airports within weeks in a bid to thwart terrorist attacks, the Prime Minister announced yesterday.

The scanners, which can see through clothes, are part of a three-point plan to step up security after the Christmas Day syringe bomb plot.

Gordon Brown also revealed that hand luggage will be tested for traces of explosives.

The measures came as a security alert forced the closure of the UK and US embassies in Yemen, where failed suicide bomber Umar Abdulmutallab was armed and trained.

Brown said: "This will be better than what we've got. It will be dealing with a problem that people have identified.

"We've found that there is a form of explosive not being detected by ordinary machines. We've gone further."

He said that the new kind of bomb Abdu lmut a l lab smuggled through security and tried to detonate on a flight to Detroit meant security had to be tightened.

Experts have warned the £80,000 scanners, which produce "naked" images of passengers, wouldn't have detected the syringe bomb.

Heathrow, Britain's busiest airport, will be the counrty's first to have the scanners on a permanent basis.

They are currently on trial in Manchester.

A spokesman for airport operator BAA said: "Now that the Government have given the go-ahead, we will introduce full body scanners as soon as practical."

Authorities are facing calls to single out Muslim passengers to minimise delays.

Khalid Mahmoud, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, said it was necessary to "profile" passengers from certain racial and religious groups to weed out possible terrorists.

He said: "I think most people would rather be profiled than blown up".

Britain's embassy in the Yemen capital Sanaa was shut yesterday after US reports that the off-shoot of al-Qaeda who trained Abdulmutallab were planning an attack.

Brown said Britain and the US were "strengthening" action against terrorists based there.

source - Daily Record