The military police are to investigate security at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport after a journalist claimed he smuggled a fake bomb past security checks while wearing a borrowed identity pass.

Justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin ordered the investigation after MPs called for urgent steps. ‘If this report is correct, we will have to take action immediately,’ Hirsch Ballin told news agency ANP. ‘Something like this must never happen,’ he added.
The AD newspaper reported on Wednesday that Alberto Stegeman, a journalist with commercial tv station SBS6, managed to take the fake bomb past security checks while posing as a member of the ground crew.
Stegeman then passed the ‘bomb’ to a colleague who placed it in the hold of a plane bound for Cairo, the paper says.
‘Passengers feel safe because all luggage is checked by 2,500 security workers,’ the paper quoted Stegeman as saying. ‘But the back door is wide open. Ground staff can come and go as they please. They don’t even have to go through a security gate’.
A spokesman for Schiphol refused to comment on the claims but pointed out that Schiphol security is in line with EU regulations which include periodic spot checks.
Hirch Ballin told MPs that Schiphol plans to introduce 100% security controls for staff from the summer, including body checks for people working in restricted areas and iris scans.