site.btaUPDATED Plovdiv District Prosecution Office Charges 23-Year-Old Man for Reporting False Bomb Threat at Local School


Plovdiv District Prosecution Office has charged a 23-year-old man for having reported a bomb planted in a school, the press centre of the Plovdiv Appellate Prosecution Office said Saturday.
The man with the initials B.T. has been charged for having made a false alarm call on March 30, by dialing 112, saying that an explosive device - a bomb - had been planted in the Vocational High School of Transport and Construction Technologies in Plovdiv, causing significant damage.
According to the prosecution, the bomb threat came from a street phone booth. A police patrol car was immediately dispatched and secured the scene. Students, teachers and staff at the school were evacuated. Upon inspection, no explosive device was found in the building.
B.T. is detained for up to 72 hours upon the decision of the supervising prosecutor. The investigation continues.
At the same time, under the supervision of the Plovdiv District Prosecution Office, a pre-trial proceeding was initiated for bomb threats in schools in Plovdiv and other cities in Bulgaria.
It has been established that two children - boys aged 15, students in the ninth grade at a school in Plovdiv, on March 27, 2023 and March 31, 2023, sent letters by e-mail to the official e-mails of the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime of the Interior Ministry and to two media outlets - an information website and a television station. In these messages, they wrote that explosive devices were about to be planted in various schools in Plovdiv and other cities of the country. The letters were sent from an e-mail registered with an electronic communications service provider outside Bulgaria.
At the moment, the investigation is being actively carried out under the supervision of the Plovdiv District Prosecution Office. No connection between the two cases has been established, the prosecutor's office said.
Earlier on Saturday, Interior Ministry Chief Secretary Petar Todorov told journalists in Plovdiv that whistleblowing "has become contagious and many people have got carried away by this trend". All of them have been detected thanks to the Cyber Security Directorate, Todorov stressed. In addition to the 17-year-olds arrested in Sofia Friday, there were three other cases in the country of minors who were detained for sending threatening emails, Todorov said. He said the arrests totalled about eight people.
/YV/
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