Prison for woman who faked Swiss airport bomb threat

The 41-year-old mother of four children called Swiss customs on Tuesday night to say a woman carrying a bomb would be at the airport on Wednesday.

The information was taken seriously by Geneva police, who launched a huge security operation on Wednesday, with queues forming outside and within the airport as passengers and vehicles were checked.

The measures were finally lifted that afternoon after police traced the call and tracked the woman to a residence in Annecy, France.

She then admitted she invented the bomb threat in an act of revenge against her husband’s mistress, who was travelling from Geneva airport on Wednesday.

Attending the court proceedings in Annecy on Thursday, the Tribune de Genève reported the woman  as saying she “hadn’t calculated the consequences” of her actions.

“My only aim was to cause problems for this woman. It was out of revenge,” she said.

Her lawyer said her actions were that of an “injured woman, married for 22 years and mother of four children”.

Annecy public prosecutor Eric Maillaud said she had provoked a “thunderclap” with her actions, which had cost hundreds of thousands of euros, set off an unnecessary police investigation and caused worry to 13,000 people who were at the airport that morning.

The court handed down a six months' sentence, of which she will have to serve three.

The woman’s husband and two of their children were in attendance at the hearing, said the Tribune.