'Fake bomb could fool scanner'

MANILA, Philippines - A fake bomb found on the 22nd floor of a Quezon City condominium building Friday could have fooled a normal scanner, a bomb expert said yesterday.

“At first glance, you’d be scared and think that it’s actually a bomb. Even a normal scanner would have shown an image resembling an explosive device. But a trained eye could immediately see that it can never explode,” Inspector Arnulfo Franco, head of the Explosives and Ordnance Division (EOD) of the Quezon City Police District (QCPD), said in an interview.

He said the pieces comprising the gift-wrapped package were materials that could never cause an explosion – a flash disk port and cords, a television antenna, an “antenna splitter,” a door hinge, a cellular phone and components of a phone charger, two canisters for technical pencil lead sticks and even two bottles filled with a liquid that smelled like fruit juice.

Franco showed journalists yesterday the materials that formed part of the “fake bomb” that caused a stir at the President’s Tower on Timog Avenue Friday.

QCPD director Chief Superintendent Elmo San Diego said the package may have been intended just to harass – and not hurt – the person to whom it was addressed: Maria Jose “Majo” Acuzar, daughter of Jose Acuzar, chairman of developer New San Jose Builders.

Police officials said the harassment may have been personal or business-related.

However, police investigators are puzzled by the fact that none of the security guards at the building saw or noticed the person who brought in the package.

“The security guards are pointing to each other as to who should have seen the one who delivered the package,” said Senior Police Officer 1 Arvin Dimahilig, who was part of the QCPD-EOD team that first went to the site.

Franco said that even if the guards were not able to immediately detect something was suspicious inside the package, they at least should have been able to remember who brought in the box. “What’s their security protocol?” he asked.

Franco said the package was supposedly seen being brought by someone on the elevator to Majo Acuzar’s office.

But when police bomb experts examined the package, it appeared that the person behind the package just did a “replica” of an improvised explosive device.

Dimahilig said the two pencil lead canisters were used to mimic blasting caps while the two plastic bottles containing a reddish liquid appeared to be the “main charge.”

The QCPD-EOD yesterday had requested an analysis of the liquid but Franco said it smelled like fruit juice.

Franco said the color could resemble that of gasoline, which could be used in an incendiary bomb, but added that gasoline has such a foul odor that it could easily be detected once the wrapping is torn open.

Franco said that at the moment, the only way to trace the source of the “fake bomb” was to determine from the on-duty guards who brought the package into the building.

He said the cellular phone number that was included in the note addressed to Majo Acuzar could not be contacted.