SHARE
COPY LINK

POLICE

Fake bomb empties Stockholm metro station

The Kungsträdsgården metro station in Stockholm was evacuated on Thursday night after a train driver alerted authorities to a suspicious package.

Authorities said on Friday that the suspicious package turned out to be a fake bomb.

Authorities were on high alert as the incident occurred less than two weeks after the country’s first suicide bombing.

“It looked like a real bomb. Someone made it to frighten people,” said Stockholm police spokesman Henrik Billestam.

Police described the packet as a object about the size of a milk carton, wrapped with silver adhesive tape with cables connected to a mobile phone.

On Thursday night police completely evacuated the Kungsträdsgården metro station and sent in deminers after a train driver alerted authorities to the possible threat.

The metro station is close to the seat of government in the Swedish capital.

Sweden has been on alert since December 11 when a suicide bomber, strongly believed to be Taimour Abdulwahab, first blew up his car and later himself near a crowded pedestrian street in central Stockholm.

He was carrying a cocktail of explosives and police suspect he may have left the crowd of Christmas shoppers due to a problem with the bombs when he mistakenly set off a small charge while standing in an empty side-street.

The bomber was the only person to die in the attack, but two people were slightly injured when his car exploded minutes earlier about 300 metres away.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

SHOW COMMENTS