German Finds Explosive Surprise in Old Sofa

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German man bought a second-hand sofa only to discover it was stuffed with three pounds of dynamite, police said on Friday.
The man alerted authorities in the western town of Hagen after finding seven suspicious blocks in the sofa’s armrests.

“You can do a great deal of damage with that much TNT. Only 200 grams were used in the Lockerbie bombings,” said a police explosives expert in Duesseldorf, referring to the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Scotland, in which 270 people were killed.

Police have arrested a 42-year-old man on suspicion of planning robberies with the explosives. They described him as an acquaintance of the sofa’s previous owner.