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Japanese tourist causes bomb scare in Germany

A Japanese tourist who chained a bag to a bench created a bomb scare in Hamburg:

The man attached his bag to the bench with a chain-like device and left the station for sightseeing, the paper said.

The police, suspecting the bag may contain explosives, closed the station for about an hour and a half Friday, and passengers were forced to evacuate the facility.

As the incident resulted in the cancellation of two train runs and delays of about 40 runs, the operator of the railway is considering demanding that the man pay damages, which could reach several tens of thousands of euros.

Should this tourist have to pay damages?

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20 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - August 24, 2009 at 6:41 am

Categories: General Japan Tags: japan, stupid, terrorism

Vonskippy

Another win for the real terrorists.

They’ve succeeded. The entire world now jumps at their own shadow and fears anything and everything unknown.

At some point in time, either all non-Islams will have to give up and become slaves to Islam, or they need to wise up and declare a “no holds barred” war and exterminate them all. Since it has been proven all to many times, to the Islams, there is no middle ground.

As to “demanding” restitution, good luck with that, there is no German law against locking up your personal property on public or private land (unless of course the train station has big bold signs stating not too). The fact that people way over reacted is not the fault of the bag’s owner nor his actions.

http://npc.talkingincircles.net/ NPC

I agree for the most part. It was stupid of him to chain it up, but even stupider for the police to overreact the way they did.

There’s precaution, and then there’s paranoia. Unless you have some evidence that the bag is a bomb you don’t go around spreading the word it might be a bomb.
ChibiR

Larger German train stations have special lockers you can use to keep your luggage. Chaining your bag to a seat in a waiting room and then leaving it all alone is most definitely not normal behavior. I normally don’t support terrorism paranoia (and fully agree that most of it is going way overboard), but I can see why the officials were nervous here. Especially since the 2006 case where “luggage + trains + bombs” had almost resulted in a very real terror attack in Germany (see Wikipedia’s “2006 German train bombing plot” entry for details).

Oh, and yes, there are rules. See here for the station rules (also available in English), which are also pinned to the wall here and there in train stations (not sure if that also goes for the English ones, though – might check some time…):

The following is not permitted:

- leaving luggage unattended
In the event of wilful or grossly negligent infringement, we reserve the right to charge the person responsible with the costs for security measures taken and any consequential damage.

You can argue that it was not “wilful or grossly negligent”, but it’s hard to argue that he didn’t do anything wrong. I’d hate to see the guy getting a 10k+ Euro bill, but I’m not going to defend him, either.

http://talesovercoffee.blogspot.com Brad F.

I wonder how they’d make him pay that if he left Germany and didn’t go back? Might be harder to convince the Japanese government to do something about it.

Dave

“Another win for the real terrorists.

They’ve succeeded. The entire world now jumps at their own shadow and fears anything and everything unknown.

At some point in time, either all non-Islams will have to give up and become slaves to Islam, or they need to wise up and declare a “no holds barred” war and exterminate them all. Since it has been proven all to many times, to the Islams, there is no middle ground.”

I’m always mystified by people that think terrorism is somehow confined to Islam. One of the worst terrorist attacks to ever take place in an airport was carried out by three Japanese nationals.

http://kingofpunk.com Kingofpunk

I totally agree with you

Eddie

Good point.

Joe

Don`t forget the IRA

The Overthinker

ISLAM = Irish Separatist League Army Militants.

radical pikachu

railway is considering demanding that the man pay damages, which could reach several tens of thousands of euros.

Something really stupid is happening somewhere in the world. If police are too chicken to open tourists suitcase, they could ask any passenger to do it.
weirdo

どっちもあほやｗ
mamoru

Even JR has bilingual warnings about unattended baggage and suspicious items.
Every country has its own rules and if the police received information about a suspicious item they cannot be blamed for what they did (maybe standard procedure?).
Japanese tourist or not, leaving the luggage on purpose in the station or in other public places is a little rude, there are designated places to do that.

Anyway about the “panic mode” I’ve just remembered a certain nation-wide overreaction about the swine flu….lol
http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

I don’t see the overreaction by the German police. The rules of the Deutsche Bahn clearly state that you are not allowed to leave your baggage unattended, but lock them away porperly, as a commenter above already pointed out. These are not special rules. The same rules apply at all international airports and they also apply at train stations at most countries that I’ve been to, including Japan. Additionally, it’s just common sense to not just leave your baggage somewhere. Japan may be the safest country in the world, but even Japanese people should know about the safety risks in other countries. From what I know, many Japanese people think that the other countries are filled with criminals anyway. So how can one be so careless?

This person was just out of his mind to do such a thing and should be held responsible. I don’t think that he’ll have to pay tens of thousands of Euros though…

By the way, I don’t remember hearing anything about that in the German news during the weekend. Quite odd, actually.

Aaaaaand… now we know why German trains are always late. Japanese tourists causing security protocls to launch. ^^
A German comedian actually made a joke in his show about train delays in Germany, stating his own conspircay theory, according to which the Deutsche Bahn buys dead bodies and the occasional herd of sheeps to place on train tracks in order to explain the delays.

N3Squick

I think I heard a very short summary on SWR3 radio, but they just mentioned “unattended lugguage”.

I actually had to google to find out that there has been some coverage of the incident.

In addition, the tourist just chose an unfortunate time, since there had been a bomb threat two days earlier…

http://www.milkdrop.de/ Tami

Well, while most of the things i could have said now have already been said…

I feel a little sorry for that guy, i just wonder if he would have chained the bag to something in Japan as well? Considering japanese are always honest and so on it would proably be most unlikey for a bag to suddenly disappear there or in the worst case it would pop up at a lost$found point.

When i pass the japanese populated areas (be it indutrial, commercial or living areas) here in germany i tend to spot things that others may have lost nicely placed on the side or on low masonries in case the person is looking for it.

Germans hardly would pick up anything laying on the street, unless it’s a wallet or something else valuable…

I mean, not trying to offend anyone or whatsoever, just pondering that little bit.

I know germany is far behind the level of general public safety compared to Japan, but that is because germans are just like that (a tad evil), at least most of them. :/
(I am german myself so yea and i think we can learn a lot from Japan, least i try to and thats maybe also why i like Japan so much. )
KYO

This has nothing to do with terrorism, simply the guy is idiot leaving items chained to a public object in public place.

Either doing that in Japan or Germany, the guy has no common sense but should have simply left the luggage in station’s luggage service for some EURO or YEN.
Mark in Yayoi

Complete overreaction by the station and the police.
ini

meh.

The japanese guy, while being one of those daydreamers who don’t read signs and even if they do is by chance, doesn’t deserve THAT kind of punishment.
Who should pay for that train stop? Of course, those who promoted this paranoid idiocy into the western “way of life”.
http://witzl.blogspot.com/ MaryWitzl

I have to weigh in with the station officials here: this guy should have known better. Why was he chaining his bag to a bench anyway? Why not just pony up some euros and go for a coin locker?
hushpuppies

I must also agree with the officials. They were just doing their jobs. They have to make sure it was safe and protect their citizens. rest assured, if he did that same thing in london or new york, people would react the same way. Has he been living under a rock since 9/11?

Japanese tourist causes bomb scare in Germany

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