Polish police detain 21 revellers after hoax airport bomb alert
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
28.03.2016 11:41
Polish police said on Monday they have detained 21 people over a hoax bomb alert that prompted Warsaw's Modlin airport to evacuate hundreds of passengers and divert flights.
Modlin airport. Photo: Panek/Wikimedia Commons
Border guards received a call late on Sunday in which someone claimed a bomb would go off at the airport, which lies 40 km north of Warsaw city centre and is popular with low-cost carriers. No explosives were found in a search.
Dawid Marciniak, from the Polish police headquarters press department, said officers tracked down the phone from which the call was made and found a group of drunken revellers at a house party.
None of them admitted to making the hoax call and a prosecutor decided to detain all the potential suspects.
Police will attempt to pinpoint the culprit after the revellers sober up. The perpetrator faces up to eight years in prison, as well as compensation claims from airlines.
"This joke turned out be be very inappropriate," said police spokesman Marciniak.
Polish Radio reported that around 800 passengers were evacuated from planes and from a terminal at Modlin airport shortly after 10 pm CET on Sunday evening. The alert lasted several hours.
Four planes were redirected to the nearby international Chopin airport in Warsaw. (pk/di)
Source: IAR/Polish Radio