Washington

A tourist sparked a major bomb scare after he confused Portuguese words for pomegranate and grenade while ordering fruit juice from a restaurant in Lisbon city.

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According to the Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manhã, the 36-year-old Russian speaker from Azerbaijan was using a translation app that erroneously gave out the wrong word for pomegranate.

When he showed the wrong translated word while ordering, the waiter thought that he was carrying a grenade and threatening to blow up the place, following which the police were called in.

The man, whose name has not been revealed, soon found himself surrounded by a group of armed police.

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Five police officers then immobilised him, cuffed his hands, and escorted him to a police station for interrogation, the newspaper reported.

A video that went viral online purportedly shows the man being forced to lie face down on the ground before five officers approach him and handcuffed him.

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According to police, the man was arrested as he tried to leave the premises when a “thorough inspection of the premises” was being carried out.

The Lisbon police also contacted Portugal’s anti-terrorism coordination unit to find if the person has any past criminal cases, but nothing emerged.

The tourist was later released after police did not find any explosives or weapons from him. His hotel room was also searched.

The confusion seems to have stemmed from the similarity between the words pomegranate and grenade in Russian, which are “granat” and “granata”, respectively. 

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In Portuguese, however, they are two separate words, with romã meaning pomegranate and granada translating to grenade — a distinction that may have been lost during the language app’s translation. 

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The incident comes at a time when police and anti-terror units are on high alert across Portugal after the government raised the terror threat from ‘moderate’ to ‘significant’ earlier in October.

The move comes in the wake of terror incidents in Belgium and France due to the Israel-Hamas war. 

(With inputs from agencies)