Whilst it’s tempting to let someone else deal with your luggage before a flight, news from Vancouver reminds us why we must always pack ourselves and check our luggage twice. This is especially true in China where Grant Cassell, lead singer of Canadian indie-rock band Behind Sapphire spent the last 6 days in prison.
The singer was caught arriving at Shanghai airport off a flight from Vancouver with antique bullets from World War II he had forgotten were in his bag. Chinese officials were not impressed, and no doubt either was Cassell with Canadian airport security who had missed the bullets in the first place.
“Coincidentally, it was Sept. 11 that day,” Cassell said in an interview with the Vancouver Sun. “I had my camouflage duffel bag and I was wearing military-style clothing. That didn’t go down very well. They kept asking me over and over again, ‘This is not illegal in Canada, to carry bullets?’ And I said, ‘Well, they’re antique, and from [the First World War], and they’re from so many different guns.’ It was a pure mistake.”
Officials allowed the rest of the band to leave and begin their tour of the country, but they continued to interogate Cassell for a further 15 hours before locking him up in a 12-by-14-foot cell with 10 other people.
“One of the offenders had murdered his sister and his brother in-law and their children with a knife; one of them was a prostitute trafficker,” he said.
The singer spent six days in the crowded cell sleeping under a urine-stained blanket on the floor whilst his bandmates continued as planned playing gigs around China without their lead singer, posting on the bands Facebook wall “Really wish Grant was here with us”.
He was eventually released Sunday and immediately put on a plane back to Canada. The Canadian Air Transport Security Agency has launched an investigation to learn how he got through security in Vancouver with the bullets in the first place.
