A bomb threat sent via SMS text message to the Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung, West Java, on Aug. 17 was traced back to a 12-year-old boy, police revealed on Saturday. Bandung Police spokesman Senior Comr. Imam Budi Supeno said the boy, identified as TPG, was taken in for questioning by police officers at 3 a.m. from his home in Tasikmalaya, West Java. “We traced the number of the cellular phone used to send the message and found that it was sent by a 12-year old boy from the town of Tasikmalaya,” Imam said. Imam said the boy admitted to having sent the message to the hospital because he was irked by repeated spam messages claiming he had won a prize of a car and Rp 50 million ($5,000). “TPG then answered the deceptive message by saying that a bomb would explode at 11 p.m. on Monday, but he missent it to Hasan Sadikin Hospital’s number in his phonebook,” he said. Imam said the police had determined that the first-year junior high school student had unintentionally sent the bomb threat to the hospital. “I was irked because I received the same message repeatedly but it was a big lie,” TPG told reporters who interviewed him in Bandung on Saturday. “After we traced the SMS bomb threat, we found that it was from a little boy and he admitted that the act was purely his doing,” Imam said, adding that the boy would not be charged. Imam said that article seven from Law No. 15/2003 on terrorism, which could bring the death penalty or life imprisonment, would not be imposed.
