Athens International Airport receives new bomb threat: "I will blow up all you Orthodox Christians"
The Eleftherios Venezilos Athens Airport has received a new bomb threat only days after a previous threat caused chaos to aviation travel.
According to Proto Thema, in the email the sender writes that he is a friend of the Russian prankster who sent the emails to plant a bomb at the airport and 6 hospitals in Athens.
"If you don't release my friend I will blow up all you Orthodox Christians," he wrote in the email.
A 42-year-old Russian was arrested in Thessaloniki by officers of the anti-terrorist-Sub-Directorate for Combating Special Violent Crimes of Northern Greece, a police announcement said on Wednesday morning.
The police arrested the Russian prankster who caused chaos in "Eleftherios Venizelos" Athens airport and six hospitals in Attica on Tuesday morning.
A case file was filed against him for terrorist acts, spreading fake news, disrupting the operation of a critical service, disturbing the peace of citizens and attempting to obstruct transportation.
For the time being, the motive of the 42-year-old Russian, who in the emails had references to Islam and threatened that "blood will be spilled" remains unknown.
It comes after fighter jets escorted a Ryanair flight to safety after the pilot reportedly called in a bomb threat mid-air, last Sunday.
The Boeing 737 was carrying 190 passengers from Katowice, Poland to Athens, Greece when Greek F-16 fighters scrambled to bring the aircraft to safety. The plane was diverted over the sea as a precaution before landing at the airport in Athens at 5.40pm local time, reports say.
The aircraft had been escorted by Hungarian Air Force jets before entering North Macedonian airspace where the Greeks took over, it was reported.
Days after this, specifically on Tuesday, fake bomb threats led to the evacuation of a section of the Athens International Airport and at least five hospitals in Greece.
A specialist explosives unit from the police searched the airport but did not find an explosive device.
Bomb threats were also received via email at five major hospitals in Athens, where a partial evacuation of patients and staff has taken place.
Police units searched the premises at the hospitals of Evangelismos, Tzanio, G. Gennimatas, Pammakaristos, Henry Dunant, and the Children’s Hospital, but found nothing suspicious.