US school expels 2 for bomb threat from Muslim pupil’s email

Two students have been expelled from a US school after they sent a "bomb threat" to more than 600 current and former students from the email account of a Muslim pupil.

The subject line of the mail sent out by the two students of the high-performing Washington Latin Public Charter School said 'Bomb' and the email appeared to come from a Muslim student's account.

The message was in fact written by two pranksters, school officials were quoted as saying by the Washington Post.

The two boys, both high school seniors at school, were expelled for threatening violence, Head of School Martha Cutts was quoted as saying.

"I was never really worried that it was a real threat, but you have to obviously take those things very seriously. It can be very unsettling for students to open an email and read that," Cutts said. The email was sent Wednesday, and it was short, "Friday there will be big boom."  The incident at Washington Latin was a case not of hacking but of opportunistic identity fraud, Cutts said. A pair of students opened a laptop during class time and discovered that a previous user -- a student who happened to be Muslim -- had failed to sign out of his school email account. They sent the short email to students in grades eight and above, as well as two classes of alumni, Cutts said.