Swedish schoolboys 'planned copycat shootings'

Two teenage boys apparently inspired by the recent school shooting in Finland were arrested today for conspiring to murder a school head and a janitor.

The boys, 16 and 17, were arrested in Stockholm after police were tipped off.

According to Swedish media reports, the two boys, students at the high school in a Stockholm suburb, had threatened to kill Rolf Oden, head of the Enskede Gards Gymnasium and his janitor.

“There is a threat against me which ... has been directed toward me personally, but I don’t want to get into it any more than that,” Mr Oden said.

“These two boys are clearly inspired by the events in Finland,” he said.

On Wednesday an 18-year-old boy opened fire in his high school in southern Finland, killing eight people and himself.

Mr Oden said the boys in Stockholm “had a fascination with guns and these type of events.”