A Russian diplomat caused a crisis at Cairo International Airport when he refused to have his luggage inspected ahead of flying to Moscow, Moheet.com reported on Friday. The embassy official would not let Egyptian security officers conduct normal security checks on a paper box that he was carrying.
The diplomat was intending to board a Royal Jordanian flight when he was asked to put the box through an X-ray machine. He claimed that it contained diplomatic material.
Sources said that airport officials called the foreign ministry, which in turn contacted the Russian embassy. It was agreed for the inspection to proceed, after which the diplomat in question boarded the flight to Amman from where he flew to Moscow.
Egypt introduced stricter security measures at its airports following the crash of a Russian aircraft in October last year after it had left Sharm El-Shaikh en route to Russia. A number of national airline suspended flights to the Sinai Peninsula resorts as a result, causing losses estimated at $1.3 billion to the Egyptian tourism industry.
Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.
