A Frenchwoman who caused a security scare on a US-bound flight after she claimed to have been fitted with some kind of device will be sent home without charge, US officials said Wednesday.

"/> A Frenchwoman who caused a security scare on a US-bound flight after she claimed to have been fitted with some kind of device will be sent home without charge, US officials said Wednesday.

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No charges against woman over plane scare

A Frenchwoman who caused a security scare on a US-bound flight after she claimed to have been fitted with some kind of device will be sent home without charge, US officials said Wednesday.

After investigations, no criminal complaint will be filed against Lucie Zeeko Marigot, a French citizen and a native of Cameroon, who caused her flight from Paris to North Carolina to be diverted to Maine, the Department of Justice said.

Marigot, 41, had given the flight attendant a note in French saying she was “a victim of a group of doctors” and that she had “an object in her body that is out of my control,” the justice department said in a statement.

“When the flight attendant asked whether the object could hurt her or others, she replied that she did not know,” it added.

“An examination by two doctors on board determined that she had no visible scars indicating any kind of implant.”

Marigot had also given the attendant a book about her personal story, which was also in French.

The US Airways plane, flight 787, flying from Paris, was diverted to Maine, where the woman was taken into custody by the FBI before the Boeing 767 continued its journey to Charlotte, North Carolina.

The plane and luggage was searched on arrival in Bangor but no explosives or dangerous items were found, the statement said.

Following the investigations, Marigot was to be taken into custody by US border officials and sent back to France, the justice department added.

Coming on the heels of a thwarted airline bomb plot by Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch, the incident has laid bare US worry over shifting tactics of militants as they seek new ways — and new technologies, including non-metallic bombs – to penetrate ever-tighter US security.

US Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty said it had been the right decision to divert the plane, given the circumstances at the time.

Last year, US officials warned airlines that militant groups were studying how to surgically hide bombs inside humans to evade airport checks.

But the head of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter King, said there should have been red flags when the woman boarded with no luggage.

“She was flying for 10 days. I think if that had been in the US, she would have been taken aside for secondary screening,” he said on CNN.

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WWII bomb found in Frankfurt safely detonated after mass evacuation

A massive World War II bomb found in Germany's financial capital Frankfurt was safely detonated in the early hours of Thursday, the city's fire service said, allowing tens of thousands of evacuated residents to return to their homes.

WWII bomb found in Frankfurt safely detonated after mass evacuation
Experts stand on mountains of sand, which were put in place to soften the force of the explosion of the WWII bomb in Frankfurt's Nordend. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Frank Rumpenhorst

The 500-kilogram unexploded bomb was unearthed during construction work on Wednesday in the densely populated Nordend area of the city, a location firefighters said made it a “particular challenge” to remove.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reported the ordnance had been discovered right next to a children’s playground at a depth of about two metres (6.5 feet).

READ ALSO: What you need to know about WWII bomb disposals in Germany

Its report said the controlled blast, which happened just after midnight, “sounded like thunder rumbling” and left a hole three metres deep and ten metres wide.

Firefighters said that they had covered the bomb with 40 truckloads of sand before detonating it, in order to minimise damage to the surrounding buildings.

Around 25,000 people had been asked to evacuate the area, including the occupants of a nearby community hospital’s neonatal ward.

Among residents who took shelter at a skating rink was 29-year-old Tobias, carrying his pet cat in a cage.

He said he had heard the news over a police loudspeaker and been ordered to leave his home immediately, causing a “bit of stress”.

Barbara, 77, told AFP the news was “a bit of a shock, we don’t expect that”.

However, building works in Germany regularly unearth unexploded World War II ordnance, 76 years after the conflict’s end.

Seven bombs were defused in 2020 on land near Berlin where Tesla plans to build its first factory in Europe for electric cars.  

READ ALSO: WWII bomb in Frankfurt triggers 30m high water fountain

Other bombs were also discovered last year in Frankfurt, Cologne, and Dortmund.

In Frankfurt, the discovery of a 1.4-tonne bomb in 2017 led to the removal of 65,000 people, the biggest such evacuation in Europe since 1945.

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