DUESSELDORF, Germany - A Croatian woman was convicted Thursday of disturbing the peace for phoning a bomb threat to Duesseldorf airport to get out of a vacation with her boyfriend.
The woman was given a suspended sentence after admitting in court that she called authorities and, in a hoax, made an al Qaeda bomb threat because her parents disapproved of her boyfriend.
"I didn't know how I would be able to tell my parents about a holiday with him and I couldn't really say to him 'Listen, my parents wouldn't approve'," the woman, 28, identified only as Marina B., told the Duesseldorf state court Wednesday.
"Then I had the idea that if the trip could somehow be blocked by someone else, for example a bomb threat, then that would solve all the problems," she added. Her flight departed anyway, several hours late.
The threat prompted authorities to shut down Germany's third busiest airport on a busy Sunday in September, stranding 64,000 people for hours, while police searched in vain for a bomb.
Police initially arrested her boyfriend, after tracing the threatening phone calls to his cell phone, when the couple returned from Spain. He denied making the calls.
Prosecutors had demanded a three-year jail sentence for the woman. But the court opted to give her a two-year suspended sentence. Separately, she faces a damage claim of 1.5 million euros ($1.9 million) from the airport and airlines.
