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Australian police: Man arrested in fake bomb case

16 August 2011 01:52 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. An Australian man was arrested in the United States in connection with an attack on a Sydney teen who had a fake bomb chained to her neck, police said Tuesday, APA reports quoting news.yahoo.com website.

The 51-year-old man was arrested in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday in an operation involving Australian police and the FBI, New South Wales state police said. Police will ask a U.S. court to extradite him to Australia. They declined to release his name or any other details.

The arrest comes nearly two weeks after 18-year-old Madeleine Pulver was attacked in her home in the wealthy Sydney suburb of Mosman as part of an alleged extortion attempt that Australia’s prime minister said resembled "a Hollywood script."

Pulver was home alone when police say a masked man broke into the house in the middle of the day, chained a device that looked like a bomb to her neck and left a note with demands before fleeing.

Bomb technicians, negotiators and detectives rushed to the scene. Neighboring homes were evacuated, streets were closed and medical and fire crews waited nearby. Pulver spent 10 terrifying hours chained to the device before the bomb squad was able to free her. She was not hurt, and the device was later found to contain no explosives.

Police say a note had been attached to the device, but they haven’t released details of what it said.

Police have said they’re treating the case as an extortion attempt. The family lives in one of Sydney’s ritziest areas and her father, William Pulver, is CEO of an information technology company.