Seminar told of bomb plans

Press, 18 February 1986, Page 14

Seminar told of bomb plans

PA Wellington A Mount Crawford Prison inmate was discovered four years ago working on a plan in his cell for a simple bomb suitable for use in an aeroplane. The bomb was designed to order for another Wellington criminal who had since died violently, the man in charge of the National Bomb Data Centre at Police National Headquarters, Mr David Hughes has said. Mr Hughes was speaking at a breakfast seminar on security measures for businesses in Wellington. The plans for the bomb contained an altimeter

which was supposed to be set to explode at 5000 metres. “I always think of that young man whenever I take off,” said Mr Hughes. Fortunately, he said, the bomb would not have worked. The pressure setting was incorrect for a commercial aircraft and light planes would not have reached the 5000 metres height level allowed for. But the young man, because of his previous job, would have had both the technical skills to plan and build the bomb, he said. During the Wellington

Trades Hall bombing investigation, the police were interested in the whereabouts of the former Mount Crawford Inmate, said Mr Hughes. He was discovered to have been in Australia at the time of the bombing. Mr Hughes told the seminar that the problem of the illegal use of explosives stretched from Kaitaia to Bluff. It was part of living in 1986 and the problem was not going to go away. A bomber could be anybody; age and sex were no bar and there was no such thing as a typical bomber, he said.

In the last few years

there had been a steady rise in the number of bomb scares in New Zealand with particular increases in 1981, the year of the Springbok rugby tour, and 1984, the year of the still-unsolved' Trades Hall bombing. Mr Hughes estimated that this year there would be about 500 bomb scares of one kind or another throughout New Zealand. He outlined for the business executives at the seminar some of the problems of evacuation of a building during a bomb scare.

Because of the difficulties of placing a bomb deep inside a building,

people were often taken to the outside of a building near entrances where a bomb was most likely to be. “If you can keep the guy out in the first place, half the problem is gone.” The Trades Hall bombing was a classic case. If the bomber had entered any further into the building the chances of his or her being caught would have been much greater. “It was important, however, to get the occupants of a building as far away from the bomb as possible. Always take the people away from the bomb, never the bomb away from the people,” said Mr Hughes.