Bomb Hoax a Good Test

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Last week’s bomb threat hoax aboard the Carnival Cruise Line ship, Victory proved to be a good test of the Cayman Islands’ terrorism response capabilities, according to members of the Royal Cayman Islands Police (RCIP.)

The threat, initiated by a Canadian woman of Pakistani descent as a result of “silly banter”, set in motion a major, multi-agency security alert last Thursday morning.

“It was an opportunity for the various components (of the emergency response services) to test their strengths, and overall I think it was a positive experience from that perspective,” said Detective Chief Superintendent Derek Haines, head of the RCIP’s Specialist Operations. “But this could have been a very serious situation and we responded with all the urgency that it implied.”

Besides the RCIP, other local security services that were involved or alerted to be in readiness for emergency response included Customs, Immigration, Government Information Services (GIS), and the medical services.

A bomb on a cruise ship bomb was one of the scenarios that the various emergency response services dealt with during an anti-terrorism exercise called “Exercise Guy Fawkes” in November of last year.

The first alert to the situation came at around 6:25 on Thursday morning, when Detective Supt Needham, Royal Cayman Islands Police (RCIP) Chief Intelligence Officer, received a call from the FBI attaché in Barbados.

The FBI in Washington had earlier received an email from a citizen in the US reporting the threat, following information received from a passenger.
On receipt of the alert from the FBI, the local multi-agency response team began to form under the direction of Acting Commissioner for Operations, Anthony Ennis.

The first action was to ask the captain to stop passengers from disembarking and to identify and isolate any passengers who had already left the ship.

Sometime after 7 am, members of response team boarded the ship, including Supt Haines, Detective Supt Mike Needham, Detective Sergeant Patrick Beersingh (Special Branch,) and Port Security Chief Joey Woods. The Fire Service was also on stand-by at the scene.

Arriving on board, the team found that the ship’s security had already been hard at work from 4:30 am, assessing cargo-loading procedures, and searching two cabins, one occupied by the woman, among other measures.

Conducting its own inquiry, the team also searched the woman’s cabin, but found nothing incriminating.

As it was determined that there was no threat to the ship, its passengers, or the local population, the passengers were allowed to leave the ship and the stand down was given.

“I am very proud of the team,” said Acting Commissioner Ennis. “They did an excellent job.”

While the RCIP concluded that no charges would be laid, the ship’s owners decided to ask the woman to leave the ship, and RCIP officers later escorted her to a US Airways flight on Thursday afternoon. “She realized the enormity of what she had done and was distraught about the situation she had created,” said Supt Haines.

Carnival Cruise Line captain, John Manuel, complimented the members of the emergency team for their professionalism in responding to the situation that could have been very serious.

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