1987 report on Airport Cavity Searches

[BendOverPlease]

This official investigation report is old (1987) but detailed and interesting:

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/comm ... procedures

It concerns a complaint to her Member of Parliament from an innocent young woman arriving in Glasgow Airport from Amsterdam. She is taken aside, stripped, and cavity searched both rectally and vaginally. The latter to her disgust requires removal of her tampon as she was menstruating, and for reasons explained later, there are no facilities in the room to use afterwards.

The MP goes on to investigate and visit the airport. All seemingly is on order and the explanation is (as ever) that there are no limits to where drug smugglers may hide stuff, so bad luck if you're innocent. There are some interesting stats. In 1987 about 1 in 1,000 visitors had some form of search with about 2% of those becoming strip/cavity. That's about 1 in 55,000 arriving at that airport by my maths, or about 2 a day.

As I say, this is old, but I suspect with illegal drugs growing relentlessly, little may have changed.