SYDNEY - Four Australian-Iraqi women have been detained at Damascus airport for allegedly trying to take gun parts hidden in a childâs toy onto a plane bound for Australia, officials said on Thursday.
The foreign ministry said the four Iraqi-born Australians plus a son of one of the women and two Iraqi women were held by Syrian authorities as they tried to board a flight to Bahrain, where they were to transfer onto an Australia-bound airliner.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said little was known about the arrests but that Australia was trying to get consular officials to Damascus to learn more. The identities of the Australian women and boy were not given. âAll I know is that they were detained in Syria and were believed to have in their possession a disassembled gun, so they have been detained,â he said.| Someone was awake at the X-ray scanner. Good. |
| Yeah, but did they search her bag of fluffy li'l baby duck chow? |
âWeâre sending a consular officer from our embassy in Cairo, which is accredited to Syria, to follow up.â
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) quoted Syrian police and diplomatic sources as saying that Iraqi women carrying Australian passports were detained when parts of a dismantled hand gun were found in a toy held by a child accompanying them. Syrian authorities were hunting for a man who dropped the women off at the airport, ABC said.
| Planted it on the kid, eh? Rat bastards. |
Syria was investigating whether the women were plotting to hijack the Gulf Air flight they were ticketed to board, it said.
A Gulf Air spokesman in Australia, David Baker, told the Australian news agency AAP that the dismantled gun was found inside hand luggage carried by the group. âI understand that the pieces of weapon were in hand luggage, but there were bullets in the (aircraftâs baggage) hold,â Baker said. âGulf Air security and the Syrian authoritiesâ security pulled up the group and they were stopped from boarding the plane,â he said.
The incident came a week after Australian police and security agents arrested 18 Muslim men in Sydney and Melbourne on charges of planning a major terrorist bombing in the country. Police alleged the 18 men were members of a terrorist group motivated in part by anger over Australiaâs military involvement alongside US troops in Iraq. |