A woman who wanted to stop her husband boarding a plane at Geneva has admitted making a false bomb threat, prosecutors said on Wednesday, after hours of tightened security that caused traffic chaos around the airport on the French-Swiss border.
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The hoax call caused French and Swiss police to massively scale up security at Geneva's Cointrin airport, which straddles the border.
Officers armed with machine guns were on duty around the airport, and vehicles were stopped on approach roads so that police could check people's papers, causing long tailbacks.
Most entrances to the airport were closed. Passengers were channeled through a few doors where heavily armed police again checked identity documents. But airport officials said the airport was open and functioning normally, despite the delays.
The Swiss authorities traced the number to Annecy in France, some 45 kms from Geneva, where French police raided an address.
"They found a woman who admitted to having made the call and explained that she wanted thereby to prevent her husband from leaving," the statement said.
Criminal proceedings have been opened against the woman, who was not identified, in both France and Switzerland, it said.
