On July 3, 2022, a British national sent a Snapchat message containing a false bomb threat while flying towards Menorca. The alert mobilized a Spanish Army Eurofighter. Although the Prosecutor's Office sought 19 years in prison and 95,000 euros in compensation, the Audiencia Nacional acquitted him. The court ruled that it could not be interpreted that he intended to mobilize the military, as the message was sent only to a private group of six friends.
“"For such a conviction, it is necessary that the person sending the false alarm message does so with that intention, and therefore, a joke or a comment where the accused did not actually intend to give a false warning would be excluded."
Another precedent is the “lone wolf” case in Vitoria, who on April 4, 2015, called 112 warning of a non-existent bomb at the bus station, activating the Ertzaintza (Basque Police). This man accepted seven and a half months in prison for public disorder with the aggravating factor of recidivism. In both cases, the accusation was based on Article 561 of the Penal Code, which punishes the simulation of danger that causes the activation of emergency teams with sentences ranging from three months to one year in prison.
The professor of criminal law at the University of Barcelona (UB), Pol Olivet, considers a conviction less likely in cases like the recent false alert on Turkish Airlines, where a passenger created a Wi-Fi network named after a threat. Olivet doubts that this can be considered an active communication of the false warning, as it would be necessary to know if anyone actually consulted the list of available networks and with what intention it was created.
