Man given public airport strip search

Sunisa 09-13-2005

A SENIOR member of a French association for accident victims said Friday he would sue a German airport for stripping him in public when a security device reacted to a metal plate in his body.

"Wednesday I was going through the metal detector gate to take the plane and the alarm went off," said Rene Auguy, 59, from Saran in central France, recounting the incident at Cologne airport in western Germany.

"I was expecting it because I have a prosthesis, a metal plate as big as your hand at the top of my pelvis. I show a paper in French and English which explains the problem," he said.

"And then the security official pulls up my shirt and pulls my trousers down to the middle of my thighs. I find myself in my underpants in front of 300 people.

"The man runs his detector over me, and it gives the alarm. He takes me pretty violently to a booth about seven metres from the gate. I was going to take off my prosthesis when the man suddenly pulls down my underpants in front of everyone, the curtains were not closed," he said.

"I felt humiliated. And in the plane people were making fun of me. I had to tell them how to behave."

Auguy, a refrigeration engineer, said he would be filing a complaint Saturday as his personal dignity had been abused.

The airline German Wings and Cologne airport said they knew nothing about the matter and said they "were not responsible for security controls."