Ex-Police Officer Held After Air France Bomb Scare

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/world/europe/air-france-bomb-hoax.html

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PARIS — A French passenger on an Air France flight that made an emergency landing in Kenya over the weekend because of a bomb hoax was arrested upon arrival in Paris on Monday, according to prosecutors here.

The passenger, a 58-year-old retired police officer, was arrested by border officials and detained at 7 a.m. at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris, according to the prosecutor’s office in Bobigny, a northeastern suburb of Paris.

The man was not identified, and his possible role in the hoax was not specified.

The arrest is part of an investigation prompted by a legal complaint that Air France filed on Monday for reckless endangerment. The lawsuit does not name a suspect but leaves it to investigators to determine who might be prosecuted, and it allows the airline to seek damages in an eventual trial.

The plane, Air France Flight 463, was traveling to Paris from the island nation of Mauritius when it made an emergency landing on Sunday in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa after a suspicious object was found in one of the aircraft’s bathrooms.

The 459 passengers and 14 crew members on the plane, a Boeing 777, were safely evacuated, and the device turned out to be made of cardboard, sheets of paper and a timer.

France is on heightened alert after a series of terrorist attacks in Paris and St.-Denis on Nov. 13 left 130 people dead and about 350 others wounded.