Bomb hoaxer escorted to city

A 19-year-old online gaming addict was escorted to Shanghai by police yesterday, after making a 1 million yuan ($158,000)-ransom call in Sichuan Province for a false bomb threat that sent dozens of officers searching for an explosive at Shanghai Pudong International Airport just before the long weekend.

The man, identified only by his surname, Pu, who is suspected of making the call as part of an online gaming prank, was detained at an Internet café in Guangyuan in Sichuan Province late Sunday, where he had phoned Shanghai airport authorities on Friday evening.

Shanghai police said that Pu is likely to be prosecuted for spreading terrorist information and endangering public security, criminal charges that could land him up to five years in jail, according to Chinese law.

Pu was caught at the café close to midnight on Sunday, ending a 50-hour manhunt for him by Sichuan and Shanghai authorities.

The affair began on Friday around 6:30 pm, when Pu called to say that he had planted a bomb on Air China flight CA406 - and would set it off unless airport authorities agreed to transfer 1 million yuan to his bank account right away.

An undisclosed number of passengers aboard the flight, which was supposed to depart for Sichuan's capital Chengdu, were immediately evacuated from the plane. Bomb experts were sent aboard the plane to dismantle the bomb, but some three hours later, they determined that no explosive was on the plane.

"Pu never gave a deadline for the ransom, so we believe that he wasn't all that interested in the money," a press officer for airport police, surnamed Sheng, told the Global Times yesterday. "It was as if he was playing a game."

Sheng said that other online gamers also heard Pu putting in the call to authorities, but declined to discuss further details, citing the investigation as ongoing.

Pu's case is the city's most serious false bomb threat by an online gamer in recent years. It follows that of a 21-year-old online gaming addict, who was sentenced to six months in jail after making a similar security threat to the Pudong airport during the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.