Plane stopped in Sweden after ‘vengeful ex bomb hoax’

A jilted lover may have caused an emergency landing in Stockholm this week after she supposedly phoned police and said her ex-boyfriend was flying with explosives. According to reports in the Swedish media, Canadian police forced a Pakistan-bound plane to land at Arlanda Airport after the woman telephoned and said her ex, who was travelling to the country to get married, was carrying a bomb.

A 28 year-old Canadian man was briefly arrested but released without charge after no explosives were found on the plane. According to tabloid Aftonbladet, the woman made up the allegations because she was unhappy about the split.

“From what I understood, an ex came forward with the claim in connection with their separation. It was surely not a happy one,” Stockholm police officer Hakan Westing told Aftonbladet. “She had an evil eye on him,” he added.

Stockholm police spokesperson Kjell Lindgren, however, told AFP that he could not confirm if the man was travelling to Pakistan to get married. He said the man would be leaving Sweden on Monday but denied that he had been prevented from flying sooner as no airline would take him.

“That’s not true,” Lindgren said. “I think it’s a misunderstanding. There was no plane, is the information I got. It just didn’t work out with the flights.”

Canadian police are said to be investigating whether the bomb alert they received was a “terrorist hoax.”