Prosecutor: Guns were smuggled aboard US airliners

NEW YORK (AP) – A brazen scheme in which guns – even an AK-47 rifle – were taken onto passenger jets for years in carry-on luggage was described by a Brooklyn prosecutor Tuesday as a terrorism threat that should lead to the end of letting workers enter airports without security screening.

“I hope this is a wakeup call for the nation,” Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said at a news conference. “This was an egregious breach of our nation’s air traffic security.”

Thompson commented as he described a case brought against five people, including an airline baggage handler who was charged a day earlier by federal authorities in Atlanta.

Thompson said he was not trying to scare anyone. But he said it’s “truly frightening” what investigators learned after a probe that started as a way to reduce gun violence in Brooklyn.

He said former Delta Air Lines employee Mark Quentin Henry took guns aboard at least 17 commercial airliners this year from Atlanta to New York airports.

Henry’s lawyer, Terence Sweeney, said his client, held without bail, “maintains his innocence and he’s looking forward to his day in court.”

Henry was arrested Dec. 10, when investigators videotaped him in the Atlanta airport prior to a morning flight to Kennedy International Airport in New York, where he was videotaped leaving the airport and was followed to his residence in Brooklyn.

Thompson said Henry was confronted by investigators at his door, he told them there were guns in a knapsack.

“He said: ‘I just brought them from Atlanta on the plane. He made that admission,” Thompson said.

The prosecutor said investigators discovered that guns were individually wrapped and that ammunition was in the bag next to them “that he could have just put together and started shooting.”

He said the scheme “really poses a threat in terms of terrorism.”

“They can put guns on a plane, they could easily have put a bomb,” Thompson said.