Štefan Gonda, the man from Poprad who unwittingly flew to Dublin with explosive planted in his luggage by police, wants Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák not to publish the amount he is to receive as a compensation for the inconvenience he experienced, the TASR newswire reported.
This information comes from a statement that TASR gained from Gonda's wife on January 25. “I'm holding talks with the ministry on this matter and, as I wish to have my privacy protected, I've asked Minister Kaliňák not to inform the public about the compensation sum,” reads Gonda's statement.
Ninety grams of explosives were found in the luggage belonging to Gonda, who boarded a plane in Poprad headed to Ireland on January 2. Police at the airport hid samples of explosives in the luggage of several unsuspecting passengers as part of the security operation. However, a package of the explosive (RDX) was stuck in the straps of the bag of the electrician and went on board the plane undetected.
The 49-year-old man was arrested in Ireland and subsequently released without charges. Gonda has also started talking to media and confirmed the interior minister's claim that the explosive was not inside his luggage. He says that he was contacted by Slovak police on Monday, January 4 in the late evening hours. They explained to him that they believed that the straps of his backpack from the outside may contain a package that was used as smell sample for a dog.
“I checked my backpack and after a while really found a small plastic bag with a grey substance in the straps in the lumbar area,” Gonda said
in a statement in the possession of the SITA newswire. TASR, SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
