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Australian arrested for online threat against US shoppers
Sun, Dec 09, 2007 The Straits Times
SYDNEY - AUSTRALIAN police have arrested a man for allegedly posting an Internet threat to shoot shoppers in a US mall just days after an American teenager killed eight people in Nebraska. The 20-year-old man was arrested late on Friday near the city of Melbourne after Los Angeles police alerted Australian officers to an Internet threat against the fashionable Grove shopping centre in west Los Angeles. 'Investigations are under way after an Internet posting was brought to our attention by the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department),' a police spokesman told AFP yesterday. The suspect was questioned and released after being charged with creating a false belief, said the spokesman, who declined to be named.

The Australian Associated Press quoted LAPD Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau deputy chief Michael Downing as saying there was enough evidence obtained by Australian police to implicate the arrested man in the threat, but there was never any danger to shoppers in Los Angeles.

'The suspect did not have any operational capacity to carry out his threat,' he said.

AFP