FRANCE: Air France Passenger Detained After Bomb Hoax

An Air France passenger has been detained after a Paris-bound flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Kenya because of a fake bomb hidden in a lavatory.

The prosecutor's office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny announced the arrest in a statement Monday. It is part of an investigation prompted by a lawsuit by Air France for reckless endangerment.

The suspect was not identified.

The lawsuit does not name a perpetrator but leaves it to investigators to determine who might eventually be sent to trial.

The bomb scare Sunday was the fourth such hoax against Air France in recent weeks, and comes as France and several other countries are on heightened alert for extremist violence.

Air France filed the reckless endangerment lawsuit after the emergency landing evacuation of nearly 500 people.

Overwhelmed with relief, passengers arrived safely in Paris on Monday, some crying as they embraced loved ones.

The hoax — the fourth against Air France in recent weeks — comes amid heightened concerns about extremist violence in many countries.

France has been on high alert for terrorist activity and in a state of emergency since Islamic extremist attacks Nov. 13 in Paris killed 130 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for those attacks and for downing a plane carrying Russian tourists out of Egypt in October.

The fake explosive was rigged with cardboard, sheets of paper and a household timer. All 459 passengers and 14 crew members on the flight, from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to Paris, were safely evacuated.

"We thought we were going to die. Because of the speed of the airplane going down, we thought we would crash in the sea," said passenger Marine Gorlier of the French town of Melun after landing at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport. She described a telephone "that did not stop ringing."

"I really admired the crew, because they thought it was a real bomb and they remained very serene," said Antoine Dupont of the northern city of Lille. "One of my grandchildren said: `The slide was super!"'