Two men who threatened to blow up a Polish supermarket with a home-made bomb are facing custody sentences of up to 30 months.

Amir S., 20, and his 18-year-lld accomplice Youssef K. told a court they hoped to gain €250 each by blackmailing the owner of the store in Beverwijk last June.

The supermarket had just been rebuilt after being damaged in December 2020, in one of a series of explosions targeting Polish stores in Beverwijk, Amsterdam and Noord-Brabant.

S. and K. are not suspected of being involved in the earlier attacks. They told the district court in Haarlem they had rigged up a bomb using an anti-personnel mine, two jerrycans of petrol and a battery, but said it was designed to intimidate rather than explode.

‘In hindsight it was obviously totally stupid,’ K. said. ‘But everything is always different in hindsight.’

An explosives expert from the Dutch forensic science service NFI said the 900-gram bomb containing 650 bullets was a ‘working heavy mine’ with the potential to kill people standing up to 150m away.

The court heard that a catastrophe had been averted when a security guard observed the pair as they placed the bomb in front of the supermarket and alerted police.

The prosecution service has demanded a sentence of 30 months in prison for S. and 20 months’ youth detention for K. The court will deliver its judgment on March 28.