UPDATE: More recent reports indicate the bomb threat may have been a hoax, and an unfortunate waste of the time and resources of law enforcement. The points about the nature of the reporting, however, still hold:
A man. A Canadian man. A Canadian citizen around the age of 30. Of Pakistani origin.
Those four things are all that we’re told about this suspect in this story, and yet none of them, not even that he is of Pakistani origin (although that one points us in the direction of the real answer), gives us any inkling as to why he might have wanted to set off a bomb on a plane. Unless there is some terror threat among Canadian men around the age of thirty that has been underreported for fear of inciting Canuckphobia.
“Canadian man arrested in Sweden after plane bomb threat,” by Carmen Chai for AFP, September 25 (thanks to Nora):
STOCKHOLM, Sept 25, 2010 (AFP) – Swedish police on Saturday arrested a man on suspicion of planning to blow up a Boeing 777 flying from Canada to Pakistan, after a bomb threat forced an emergency landing in Stockholm.
“We are detaining a man that we suspect had some explosives aboard an aircraft between Canada and Pakistan,” Stefan Raadman of the Stockholm police, who is heading the investigation, told reporters at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport.
Police said no explosives had been found in the search so far, and interviews with passengers and the suspect were ongoing.
The man, a Canadian citizen around the age of 30, was arrested for “planning to sabotage an airplane,” he added.
The Pakistani International Airlines (PIA) flight was on its away to Karachi from Toronto and landed at Arlanda airport shortly after 0730 GMT….
He added the suspect was “of Pakistani origin.”…
“A woman contacted the Canadian police and said there was a man on board that could have explosives on him. We do not know for the moment who this woman is,” Janne Hedlund of the Stockholm police told the TT news agency….