SOMEONE logged onto a computer in a Chinatown Internet cafe last month and shot off a bomb-threat e-mail to American airline company Delta Airlines.

He wrote that Delta Flight 1778, slated to fly in two days from Atlanta, Georgia to Tampa, Florida, would have a bomb on board.

Signing off as 'Mr Islamic Jihad' from the terror organisation Al-Qaeda, he ended the e-mail with 'Long live Al-Qaeda'.

Investigations have led the police to a suspect, Josemaria Miguel Ye Yong Qiang, 39, who was on Friday charged in a district court under the United Nations (Anti-Terrorism Measures) Regulations.

The Act was introduced here in 2001 following the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, to nail those who stoke fears of terrorist attacks by creating false alarms.

A conviction brings up to five years' jail and a fine of up to $100,000.

Ye, who was arrested in Geylang Lorong 23 on Thursday, is in police custody and is due back in court on Friday.

He is also known to have sent several other e-mail bomb hoaxes to overseas airline companies last month, said the police.

The owner of Mega Cybernet in Pearl's Centre along Eu Tong Sen Street, the cafe from where Ye allegedly sent the e-mail, told The Straits Times he was unaware of what had happened in the shop.

He declined to give his name, but said the police had come to his shop last month and asked to see the log books.

'They did not say what they were looking for when I asked them,' he said, adding that the log books only record the durations of patrons' Internet usage but not their names.

There have been at least four other reported bomb-hoax cases in the past year.

In January, National Environment Agency senior manager Neo Khoon Sing, 38, was sentenced to 21/2 years' jail for having sent e-mails in 2005 to Government websites warning of imminent terrorist attacks.