A Dutch teenager has been arrested after jokingly tweeting a terror threat to American Airlines. Unsurprisingly, the airline didn’t see the funny side of it and reported the threatening message to the authorities:
The prankster then swiftly backpedaled, claiming that the tweet was said as a joke, before posting a number of further messages lamenting her decision and seeking legal advice. The story soon went viral on Twitter, with @queendemetraiax_ gaining over 3 thousand followers that day. Eventually she deleted all of the tweets, but not before someone was able to Storify them:
Teen Tweets @AmericanAir: “Hello my name’s Ibrahim and I’m from Afghanistan”
However, it would appear that the authorities take these things incredibly seriously, and yesterday it was confirmed by Rotterdam Police that they had arrested the 14-year-old girl:
[tweet https://twitter.com/Politie_Rdam/statuses/455715116903047168 align=’center’]
A spokesperson for the Dutch police told Business Insider, “We’re not in a state that we can communicate any state of charges at this point, 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.”
This isn’t the first time people have found themselves in custody – or even given jail terms – for saying something on social networks, even if in jest. So next time you think you might have something funny to say, just consider the implications of that message being seen or heard by a wider audience than you may have anticipated.