Objective Proficiency p 26. Columbine-inspired Attack. Extra Listening and Reading



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Police 'foil plot to bomb Spain's Balearic university

Spanish police arrest man with 140kg of explosives after he boasted of ‘doing a Columbine’ massacre of university students

Columbine copycat faces long term

THE youth aged 21 arrested for allegedly planning a massacre in Palma University was sent to prison without bail. Trials have started and he could be facing up to 28 years in jail, judiciary sources said.
At press time, the defence lawyer had asked an exhaustive psychiatric and psychological test exam for her client. There are still no data estimates for a final sentence.
The suspect pleaded guilty of the charges, as he reportedly boasted of his intention to mimic the Columbine tragedy of 1999 in the US, when 14 were killed and 24 injured by two high school mates. He would have done it next April 20, police sources said, in the exact 14th anniversary of the slaughter.
“All of those who died in Columbine deserved it,” the Palma copycat wrote in his personal diaries, police officers found during the raid. The youth had just received a 140kg pack of explosives at his home in Palma, which he had bought through the Internet, when the police entered. Officers also found many documents where the suspect had written his plans for strategically placing shrapnel-filled tube bombs made of nitrogen and nitrate ammonium, a very powerful and harmful explosive similar to those used by terrorist groups.
In the found documents, as well as in his personal Internet blog, the suspect expressed his hate to society (especially University students) and the possibility of committing suicide during the events.
After the news went public, Home Office Minister Jorge Fernandez made a public speech, saying that “a probable massacre” had been avoided and that “many lives” had been saved. He also congratulated the police for this “extremely brilliant operation.”
-Euro Weekly News-

Vocabulary
Copycat: 1. used especially by children about and to a person who copies what somebody else does because they have no ideas of their own. 2. (of crimes) similar to and seen as copying an earlier well-known crime. E.g. copycat crimes. The copycat phenomenon is a danger to which the media may be contributing.
Allegedly: stating something as a fact but without giving proof. Reportedly. Sp. Presuntamente, supuestamente. E.g. crimes allegedly committed during the war.

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