Man Caught at JFK Airport with Explosives

A government contractor slipped some unusual keepsakes onto his flight home from Afghanistan: highly explosive Soviet munitions that went undetected until he arrived at Kennedy Airport, federal officials said.Shaun Marshall, a medic for defense contractor DynCorp Inc., arrived at Kennedy on an August 19 flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He was trying to board a United Airlines flight home to California when he was pulled aside for a routine security check.Transportation Security Administration officers searched Mr. Marshall’s checked bags and found what police bomb technicians described in an FBI complaint as “a Soviet V429E projectile point detonating fuse and a 23mm Soviet military full-round surface-to-air and air-to-air cartridge.”Federal officials said they could not comment yesterday on the risk that the munitions posed to the Emirates Airlines flight to New York. But the Police Department bomb squad determined “the Soviet detonating fuse and cartridge were in and of themselves highly explosive,” according to an FBI complaint against Mr. Marshall.He also had five .50-caliber bullets and four small arms cartridges, which he did not declare as required by law, according to the FBI complaint.“The fact that TSA located these explosives indicated the system is working,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence Ferazani said.Mr. Marshall, 26, told officers he was importing the munitions, which he believed to be inert, for use in DynCorp training exercises. Port Authority police released him, federal officials said.The FBI sent agents to arrest Mr. Marshall at his Riverside, Calif., home after the bomb squad analyzed the munitions, and DynCorp officials said Mr. Marshall had no involvement in its training operations.Mr. Marshall was released on bail in California and was expected to be arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn tomorrow. He faces charges of placing explosives on an aircraft and trying to place ammunition on a domestic flight without notifying the carrier.

Man Caught at JFK Airport with Explosives

Man Caught at JFK Airport with Explosives

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