Man arrested after backpack bomb scare at US embassy
The backpack also contained Islamic literature.
The suspect — described only as a 42-year-old Bosnian who lives in the province of Lower Austria — was captured after he was seen dropping the bag and trying to run off, a Vienna police spokeswoman said.
No one was injured.
Police said the man had tried to enter the embassy, but dropped the bag and fled when he set off a metal detector alarm. It was unclear whether the man entered the embassy.
A spokeswoman for Austria’s federal counter-terrorism office said: “There were a lot of nails in that bag. Had it exploded, it would have had an enormous shrapnel effect.”
Bomb squad specialists found two devices similar to hand grenades and other explosive material in the rucksack, as well as nails and a book that had “some reference to Islam”, the spokeswoman said.
The man, born in 1965, was being questioned, she said. “He appears to be a bit confused,” she said, adding that there were no initial indications he had an Islamic background.
The explosives resembled hand grenades, she told reporters, but munitions experts were still working to determine whether the device had been properly rigged to explode.
The suspect spoke broken German and appeared to ramble during an initial interrogation, she said.
Yesterday’s incident was the second recent terrorism scare in Austria.
Last month, authorities arrested three people — all Austrian citizens of Arab origin — in connection with a video posted online in March that had threatened Austria and Germany with attacks if they did not withdraw their military personnel from Afghanistan.
One of the suspects was released several days later for lack of evidence.
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