Subject: Re: Feel good story of the day
I don't think a proportionality analysis applies when you are in contravention of international law. Let's say they booby-trapped a military device. Then, sure. Someone near the perp in a market may get hurt, but you're also not violating international law. And such a military device wouldn't be allowed on a plane, so that wouldn't be an issue.

The question is whether this is a military device or not. Some classes of military devices are also used by civilians (such as rifles, jeeps, etc.) - but the specific objects might only be used by the military. If you're sabotaging a piece of military materiel that isn't going to be used by civilians, that's probably permissible under international law, even if there are civilian versions of that object. The purpose of the law is to prevent the booby-trapping ordinary objects that are likely to be used by civilians, but these pagers and walkies may not fall within that category.

I don't think old-school pagers work on an airborne aircraft.