A 14-year-old girl from Rotterdam has been arrested after tweeting a joke bomb threat to American Airlines, Rotterdam police said on Monday afternoon.

Rotterdam police sent out a tweet saying the girl had been arrested and the investigation is continuing. Both news website nu.nl and the Telegraaf newspaper said the girl was detained after reporting to a local police station.

The girl, named as Sarah, sent out a tweet on Sunday evening stating ‘@Americanair. ‘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.’

FBI

The airline responded by telling the girl ‘Sarah, we take these threats very seriously. Your IP address and details will be forwarded to security and the FBI.’

The girl then made a string of excuses and said she was now ‘really scared’ when the airline failed to respond. Her twitter account and the American Airlines reply have since been deleted.

‘Her tweet led to worldwide turmoil,’ a police spokesman told nu.nl. ‘She will be interviewed on Monday evening. Then we will wait and see what happens next.’

Threats

Last October, the Volkskrant reported that some 35,000 threatening Tweets are sent in the Netherlands and 200 are so serious that the police take a closer look.

Someone is arrested or given a warning about a threat made via social media almost on a daily basis, Martine Vis, interim Rotterdam police chief and responsible for social media within the national force, told the paper.

Many are teenagers but others are members of interest groups or ‘radicalised’ individuals. Several Dutch teenagers have been arrested for threatening ‘bloodbaths’ at their schools.