Nearly 24 years ago, in December 2001, a British man named Richard Reid attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami by hiding homemade bombs in his shoes.
It’s likely one of the factors that influenced the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to implement a “shoes-off” policy. It required travellers to remove their shoes while going through security checkpoints at airports across the United States to screen for explosives. Although that rule didn’t become official until 2006, TSA started to ask passengers to voluntarily take off their shoes following the incident,
.
Canada says it will align with U.S. on ending unpopular airport security measure
TSA told National Post in an emailed statement on Wednesday that the “shoes-off” policy was “based on intelligence pointing to a continuing threat.”
Reid pleaded guilty to eight terrorism-related charges in 2002,
, and was sentenced to life in federal prison. He’s making headlines again after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced an end to the
.
Travellers will no longer have to take off their shoes while going through TSA checkpoints, said Noem
The approach to security has been “honed” and “hardened,” she added, explaining that passengers will still pass through multiple layers of screening.
Who is Richard Reid, known as the ‘shoe bomber’?
The 51-year-old was born in London, England. He was a high school dropout who was first arrested at 17 for mugging a senior citizen,
in an archived article. He was in and out of prison until his early 20s. He converted to Islam in 1995 and changed his name to Abdel Rahim, per online encyclopedia Britannica.
He eventually became more radicalized.
In the late 1990s, he reportedly attended the same mosque as a convicted conspirator of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
. It was alleged in Reid’s indictment that he travelled to Afghanistan and received training at camps run by terrorist organization al-Qaeda, per Time.
What happened in December 2001?
In December 2001, Reid purchased a pair of basketball shoes. They were packed with roughly 10 ounces of explosive material, the FBI said. He attempted to board a flight from Paris that stopped in Miami on Dec. 21; however, he ended up missing his flight after security searched him extensively. He raised suspicion because he purchased the ticket with cash, had no luggage and appeared agitated.
The following day, he boarded another flight from Paris to Miami, American Airlines flight 63. He tried to ignite the explosives that were hidden in his shoes with a match, but he was retrained by passengers and crew members. The flight was diverted to Boston, where Reid was arrested. He told FBI agents that he made the shoes himself. Bomb technicians said that if they had been ignited, the explosion had the capacity to “blow a hole in the plane’s fuselage,” causing the plane to crash. There were
on board.
Reid accused the American government of sponsoring the torture Muslims in Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Syria with money and weapons,
. “Islam saved my life. It was under attack by the West, I had to do what I could,” he said.
Reid is currently incarcerated at a high-security penitentiary in Colorado.
Will the latest technology stop a shoe bomb?
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Noem fielded questions about the recent policy change. She was asked whether or not every airport nationwide has the capability to stop a shoe bomb, for example, from making it through security.
“We’ve gone back and evaluated this process and how we screen individuals and looked at the efficacy of it,” she said.
“There will be individuals at times that will be asked to remove their shoes. If we think there are additional layers of screening that are necessary, that may still happen to an individual. But we are excited with the fact that we have the technology now that we have the multi-layers of screening in place that we’ve built in over the recent several years that give us the ability to allow our travellers to keep their shoes on.”
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