Not me personally.
A colleague (now former colleague) told me about his horrible experience of a cavity search.
Since I - and several of my colleagues - travelled extensively those days, we often shared travel experiences and those about officials one made contact with:
- the emigration guys
- the customs guys
- airport and airline security guys
Many countries were putting in extra security measures at time.
My colleague had just got off the plane and had just crossed emigration and was making his way to the baggage area when two tough looking guys stopped him, flashed an ID and asked him to come with them.
They remained silent when he asked what it was about.
They took him to this windowless room and made him strip naked - everything, starkers!
Then one of them looked into my colleague's mouth, ears, nose flashing a torch.
The other pulled on rubber gloves and stuck fingers into my colleagues rectum and wiggled them around.
They fiddled with his penis too.
No amount of protesting and yelling helped - they were met with threats. His demands for a lawyer, someone from the embassy were ignored.
Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, my colleague's luggage had been opened and scrutinized carefully. Everything had been taken apart. Even the linings of his suitcases had been ripped open.
When they could find nothing, they let him off with a flippant apology.
It seemed that my colleague's name or face, or both, resembled one in a look-put order that they had received from their intelligence department.
No amount of complaining to the embassy helped.
The way my colleague narrated the story was enough to raise goose bumps.
He felt embarrassed, humiliated, hurt and very angry. That the embassy did not offer any help, has made him a permanent, and ruthless, critic of the foreign service.
I swore never to travel to that country - ever. And never have!