A 31-year-old Swede was given a two-month suspended prison sentence in Denmark on Thursday for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen airport this summer.
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When 31-year-old Pontus Wiklund accompanied a handball team to an international competition in late July, he jokingly told baggage drop employees that a bag filled with balloons contained a bomb.
“We assume that you must have realized that uttering the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your pocket will most likely be perceived as a threat,” the court said in its ruling. According to TV2, which was present at the hearing.
The young coach was immediately arrested and the airport terminal was temporarily evacuated.
He then apologized on his club’s website.
For the prosecution, the fact that Mr. Wiklund wanted to make a joke, as his lawyer emphasized, does not constitute a mitigating circumstance.
“This is not something we look at with humor in the Danish justice system,” said prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen.