Police in the Vantaa suburb of Hakunila have arrested a man who had threatened to detonate explosives in front of an apartment building late on Tuesday night. The police were alerted by a local resident who saw him place three sticks of dynamite in the yard in front of the building.

   

In a police interrogation the man revealed that his intention was to take revenge on Somali immigrants living in the area for injuries he suffered during racially-motivated violence over a year ago.

   

A number of clashes between Finnish youths and local Somalis occurred in the autumn of 2000. In the most serious incident, a group of Finns first smashed the windows of a car driven by a Somali-born man, who then tried to run over three Finnish men. The driver was later given a 2.5-year prison sentence.

   

"The dynamite man suffered serious injuries to his legs. Now he tried to avenge the wrongs he felt were done to him. Apparently this was completely his own whim", says Juha Juurinen of the Vantaa police.

If the three sticks of dynamite

had gone off, the explosion would at least have broken the windows of the nearby buildings. One of the buildings in the area used to be known locally as the "immigrant house". However, many of the families that lived there have moved away.

   

After the man was arrested the area was cordoned off. The situation was over at about 2:00 AM on Wednesday.

   

A breathalyser test showed that the dynamite man, a Hakunila resident himself, had a blood alcohol level of 2.0‰. Police say that he has committed a number of assaults, the most recent of which occurred last autumn.

Racial and ethnic tensions made Hakunila

the focus of a good deal of unwelcome attention just over a year ago. Since then things have calmed down considerably.

   

Vantaa police chief Yrjö Laihio says that local officials have good relations with local Finnish youth and the immigrant community.

   

One of the spokesmen for the immigrants, Vantaa City Council member Abdulrahman Abdi Rage (Green), says that the dynamite incident came as a disappointment to him. "The city has made praiseworthy efforts to solve the problems of Hakunila. For our part, we have made efforts to get immigrants to understand what is expected of them in Finland."