Posted on 01/01/2004 11:28:52 AM PST by Alouette
A man who told police officers he was top terror suspect Osama Bin Laden has been arrested on the Moscow metro. But far from being bundled off to Guantanamo Bay on a US jet, the New Year's Eve detainee was handed over to the tender mercies of psychiatrists.
Officers swooped after reports of a man making a nuisance of himself on a train during the New Year's Eve revels, Russia's Interfax news agency reports.
Asked to produce ID, he announced he was America's most wanted man.
Officers, not immediately convinced they had the biggest catch on their hands since Saddam Hussein was extracted from his "spider hole" in Iraq, summoned psychiatric assistance.
The arrest at the Kursk Ring Line Station near Moscow's city centre came as Russians plunged into the New Year carnival - the nation's favourite holiday.
Not everyone appears to have appreciated the all-night parties across the capital, however.
Police are investigating an incident at 0400 local time, when a man allegedly fired a hunting rifle into a crowd of young ravers in the south-east of the city, wounding two.
A 40-year-old man arrested by police reportedly said he could not get to sleep from the fireworks going off outside his flat, Moscow Echo radio station reports.
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