KENYA: Passenger detained, sentenced to 4-months in jail over bomb joke

A court in Kenya has sentenced an Ethiopian passenger identified as Chifraye Bekele to four months in prison, for joking about a bomb after boarding a Kenya Airways flight in Nairobi.

Magistrate Christine Njagi on Tuesday found Bekele guilty of “imperilling the safety of aircraft and persons on board”.

According to the judgment, passed on to the BBC, Bekele had said to a flight attendant as she was closing an overhead locker: “Why are you scared? You think it’s a bomb?”

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While testifying in court via a translator, Bekele said he did not make the joke as he only spoke Amharic and not English.

But the magistrate sentenced him to four months in jail or a 100,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,000; £800) fine.

Bekele’s joke had led to the cancellation of the Johannesburg-bound flight in April and to a three-hour shutdown of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in the capital, Nairobi.

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