Sweden jails Israeli for bomb scare

A Swedish court sentenced on Friday an Israeli asylum seeker who caused a major bomb scare in Stockholm to two years in prison.

Amram Ivri, a 43-year-old man whose asylum application had been turned down by Sweden, walked into the office of Swedish NGO Civil Rights Defenders on June 19 falsely claiming to have explosives strapped to his body.

He claimed he was from a “terrorist organisation” and threatened to detonate two bombs in the headquarters of Sweden’s largest political parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderates.

Police officers cordoned off two large areas of central Stockholm after the man entered the offices of the charity.

The “bomb belt” turned out to be a dummy and he surrendered later the same day after negotiating with police on the telephone.

The Stockholm district court found him guilty of threats and false alarm and ruled that he be deported after serving his prison sentence. It also barred him from coming back to Sweden until 2024.