Boy in German court over school fake grenade ''prank''

Berlin, September 8

A German court has ordered a 15-year-old boy to do community work and write an essay titled "Why you shouldn't make jokes with toy weapons" after he threw a fake hand grenade in front of a teacher and shouted "Allahu akbar."

The teenager, a Moroccan citizen, had been charged with disturbing the peace by threatening crimes. Duesseldorf district court spokesman Marcel Due said a judge dropped the charges on Thursday on condition that he do 20 hours' community work and hand in the three-page, handwritten essay.

Due says the boy, whose name wasn't released in keeping with German privacy rules, said the incident in May was meant as a prank and denied having any Islamic extremist motivation.

He told the court he found the fake grenade lying in the schoolyard. —  AP