Stuttgarter Zeitung: Kein Sprengstoff in der Unterwäsche
Sometimes people make stupid jokes in inappropriate places and occasions. It seems that they can’t help themselves. A 42-year old father in Germany has been arrested for joking that he had explosives in his underwear.
After making the ‘joke’ initially at the Stuttgart airport, he was asked by a security personnel to confirm what he had said, which he did, and was promptly arrested by the police. He and his family were due to travel to Egypt for a holiday, but the airline company refused to take the rest of the family, and it refused to pay back the fares the family had already paid. The father may be liable for a fine around 1,000 euros for the unnecessary police cost he caused, in addition to ruining the family holiday.
Some of us may feel that the dangers are hyped up, and there is a mass hysteria, but making a joke of this nature in these circumstances is a pretty bad idea. I wonder what possessed the man to say such things, when it’s pretty obvious that things will be taken quite seriously during periods of heightened security.