STUTTGART, Germany, Sept 8 (AFP) - A German doctor's assistant on Thursday was jailed for three and a half years for trying to extort money from banks, hotels and airports with e-mail threats sent from Internet cafes in Thailand.
The court in this southern city ruled that the 44-year-old had sent dozens of e-mails threatening to kill people or blow up buildings if he was not paid because he needed money for a flight home from Asia.
The man also said he was facing a heavy fine because he had overstayed his visa for Thailand after falling in love with a Thai woman, but that his girlfriend had left him when he ran out of money.
Under the aliases Jonathan Drake and Vincent Baxter, he sent out a total of 39 e-mails to German and Austrian institutions demanding between 5,000 and 10,000 euros (6,000 and 10,000 dollars) from the recipients and threatening to kill someone close to them if they failed to pay.
He told airport authorities in the messages that he would detonate hidden bombs if he did not receive between 50,000 and 100,000 euros.
At Vienna's Schwechat airport, a security team was forced to hold a crisis meeting over the threats while security officials at Tegel airport in Berlin dispatched sniffer dogs to hunt for explosives.
Most of the institutions targeted, however, ignored the threats on the advice of the police.
Authorities were able to trace the e-mails back to Thailand and arrested the suspect when he flew back to Germany.
The defendant, who had already run into trouble with the law in 1992 for threatening a German pop singer, told the court that he had found the e-mail addresses for "the crazy idea of blackmail" on the Internet.