When done right, jokes can be funny, even inspirational. However, when done wrong, jokes can get you arrested. The latter happened when a 14-year-old girl from the Netherlands decided it was time to joke around with American Airlines by tweeting a terror threat.
“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,” tweeted the teen. American Airlines did not find the joke funny, responding that it “takes these threats seriously” and that her IP address and tweet would be “forwarded to security and the FBI.”
All of a sudden, the teen went on the defensive, saying that she “was kidding” and that she’s “just stupid okay.” If there was a silver lining in this, it’s that the teen was happy to report that she “gained 3k followers today.” Whatever good times she was having were cut short, because Rotterdam police confirmed that she was arrested today.
In a statement sent to Business Insider, an official spokesperson for the Dutch police Wessel Stole said, “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.”
Dutch girl (14) from Rotterdam arrested after American Airlines threat. Investigation continues. #Rotterdam #Police #Force @americanair
— Politie Rotterdam eo (@Politie_Rdam) April 14, 2014
American Airlines deleted its tweet “after it had been addressed in order to be able to focus on our customers.” In the statement, the airline also said, “At American, the safety of our passengers and crew is our number one priority. We take security matters very seriously and work with authorities on a case by case basis.”
So what are the main takeaways from this?
- Whether you’re kidding or not, don’t make terror threats of any kind. That’s just dumb.
- Apparently, American Airlines knew her IP address, which is weird. Either that, or the airline was bluffing and simply reported the tweet to the authorities.
- You can bet she’s going to get grounded by her parents for this.
