For the past nine years, Iraq’s security forces have tried to stop car bombs with a British-made bomb detector wand that was long ago proven to be fake. “Sometimes it is better to pretend,” said one senior interior ministry official. The interior ministry, which was responsible for the procurement of most of the wands, had already shelved an earlier inquiry. Their withdrawal follows years of insistence by interior ministry officials, who bought the wands at vastly inflated fees, that they were effective in sensing odours from explosive components. A day after a car bomb killed at least 157 people in central Baghdad, the country’s prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, has demanded their withdrawal.

Source: The Guardian July 04, 2016 17:35 UTC