Iraqi lawmakers have demanded the withdrawal of a UK-made bomb detection device after the British government said it doesn't work and its manufacturer was arrested on suspicion of fraud.The Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, tonight ordered an investigation into the mass purchase of the ADE651 wand, made by ATSC, which had been sold in bulk to Iraqi security forces, before Britain imposed an export ban last week amid new doubts about its effectiveness.
The security and defence committee of the Iraqi parliament alleged that there had been corruption in the tendering process, which has seen some ministries stand by the devices despite a spate of devastating attacks in which car bombs passed through multiple checkpoints that had used the detector.
The US military has been scathing, claiming the wands contained only a chip to detect theft from stores. The claim was based on a study released in June by US military scientists, using x-ray and laboratory analysis, which was passed on to Iraqi officials.
"The examination resulted in a determination that there was no possible means by which the ADE651 could detect explosives and therefore was determined to be totally ineffective and fraudulent," Major Joe Scrocca, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, told the Associated Press.
The US military, and private contractors that guard Baghdad's international zone and airport road, use tried-and-tested sniffer dogs to keep explosives out. But elsewhere in Baghdad, police or soldiers man virtually every checkpoint with one of the wands, which retail at around $40,000 (£24,840) each.
Hussein al-Falluji, a member of the security and defence committee, said: "These devices have caused nothing but big problems in Iraq. They have failed to detect bombs and thousands of Iraqis have been killed Â… it has been proven they are a 100% failure."
The furore erupted after a BBC Newsnight investigation took the wand to a Cambridge University computer lab, which demonstrated beyond doubt that it contained nothing that could detect components used to make explosives. Despite the scientific condemnation, the Iraqi interior ministry was standing by its bulk purchase of around 3,000 devices, claiming it had successfully detected 773 bombs.