American Airlines Tweet Bomb Threat Goes Viral, 'Joke' Gets Dutch Girl Arrested
A tweet to American Airlines over the weekend was taken very seriously as a terrorist bomb threat, and the joke perpetrated by one young Dutch girl ended up with her submitting to the authorities. The teen, known only as Sarah, tweeted a terrorist threat at the airline, but was shocked to see it went viral and gained her 30,000 followers almost overnight.
The American Airlines tweet from Sarah's Twitter account @QueenDemetriax_ read: "hello my name's Ibrahim and I'm from Afghanistan. I'm part of Al Qaida and on June 1st I'm gonna do something really big bye."
American Airlines responded immediately, warning the girl that her tweet was considered a real threat.
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"@queendemetriax_ Sarah, we take these threats very seriously. Your IP address and details will be forwarded to security and the FBI."
Sarah began backtracking immediately, claiming that a friend wrote the tweet, revealing her identity as "just a fangirl" and "a white girl" from the Netherlands.
"I'm kidding pls don't I'm just a girl pls," she wrote in a rambling apology. "And I'm not from Afghanistan."
Unfortunately, her tweet went viral, gaining her thousands of followers who called her an "idiot" for posting the tweet in the first place. The thousands of followers prompted Twitter to delete the tweet and American Airlines to respond with another statement.
"At American, the safety of our passengers and crew is our number one priority. We take security matters very seriously and work with authorities on a case by case basis," they said.
The girl and her mother went to a police station in Rotterdam Monday and she voluntarily turned herself in, according to local authorities.
"We're not in a state that we can communicate any state of charges at this point," Wessel Stole, a Dutch police spokesperson, told Business Insider. "We just thought it was necessary to bring this out mostly because of the fact that it caused a great deal of interest on the Internet."
Sarah's stunt has spawned at least one copycat— someone posted a bomb threat to Southwest Airlines Monday, and the airline responded that their "info [has] been given to the appropriate authorities" even though it was apparently another joke.
