Working Grant - Everybody's a terrorist!

BRUSSELS - Never before did a terrorist attack have such an impact on daily life as 9/11. More than anything else, air travel has become quite a bit more strenuous. Budgets for the war on terror are growing every year. Security forces want to intercept every possible terrorist. The security industry comes up with a solution for every possible problem.

Passengers are queuing for the detector gates shoes in hand. They are scanned by body scanners and interrogated exhaustively about their private life. If found suspicious, they are put on a blacklist, without even knowing it. Whoever ends up on such a list - and this also holds for Belgian passengers - will experience considerable difficulties when wanting to travel by plane again in the future.

And that is not all. Flights from American airlines flying to Belgium often carry armed air marshalls who will shoot to kill in case of conflict. The molehill has been made into a mountain. The author's undercover investigations and thorough research show that those safety measures are sometimes applied in very creative ways. Has air travel really become safer?

Denise Van Den Broeck is a freelance journalist. In 2008 she went undercover as a security guard in an organisation that works in the security zone of Brussels Airport. Her job was to track down terrorists, bombs and drugs.

Her book 'Iedereen terrorist!' ('Everybody's a terrorist!') is only available in Dutch.

File number: 

2009/688

A grant of 4.000 Euros was approved on 2 March 2009.

 

Authors

Denise Van den Broeck

Denise Van den Broeck (°1957) is a freelance journalist. She wrote the books 'Het kloppend hart van het spoor' (1998), 'Stinkende zaakjes' (2003) en 'Medische Blunders' (2004). In 2008 she worked undercover as a security guard in the security zone of Brussels Airport where she was assigned to track down terrorists, bombs and drugs. She wrote down her observations in the book 'Iedereen terrorist!' (2012). 'Medische Blunders', 'Stinkende zaakjes' and 'Iedereen terrorist!' were realised with support of the Pascal Decroos Fund.