Ray Ghansham Persaud, 20, who is accused of making several hoax bomb threats at the University of St. Thomas over the last six months, made his first appearance Tuesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Docherty asked Judge David T. Schultz to detain Persaud because of “significant public safety concerns.” Schultz assigned a public defender to the suspect.

Persaud was arrested on one count Tuesday morning and faces a charge of “using an instrumentality of interstate commerce to make a threat to kill, injure or intimidate any individual, and to damage or destroy any building, by means of fire and explosive.”

“I am very relieved that a suspect has been identified and arrested and that our community is not in danger from these hoax threats,” President Julie Sullivan wrote to the campus community in an email.

Sullivan said Persaud is a third-year undergraduate student who commutes from Blaine. She said he has been suspended.

In the past six months, three separate bomb threat incidents occurred. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the FBI determined Persaud called via Voice Over Internet Protocol through multiple apps that allow the use of multiple phone numbers.

The first threat, called in on April 17 to the campus switchboard, informed officials of a bomb on campus. McNeely Hall was named in a second call that led to an evacuation of the building. A third call named another building, which resulted in officials closing the St. Paul campus.

On Aug. 20, a second threat was called into the campus switchboard naming John Roach Center as the location of the threat. JRC was evacuated and all classes in the building were canceled for the remainder of the day.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Thomas’ Public Safety Department looked through the telephones connected to the campus WiFi network on the morning of Aug. 20 and found that one of those phones had been named “Ray’s phone.”

The third threat was called in at 7:24 a.m. Sept. 17, five months to the date after the first incident. Public Safety Director Dan Meuwissen said the campus switchboard received “numerous calls in a row,” giving different information in each.

The caller stated there were four bombs naming O’Shaughnessy Science Center, the John Roach Center, and the Anderson Student Center; in a later phone call the Facilities Design Center was named, according to the complaint. The buildings named temporarily closed and classes resumed in the buildings that afternoon.

Calls from the third threat were traced to Persuad’s home address, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Persaud had scheduled classes in McNeely Hall on April 17, in John Roach Center on Aug. 20 and in O’Shaughnessy Science Center on Sept. 17, according to the criminal complaint.

Persaud is scheduled for another court appearance at 1 p.m Friday.

For student reactions, watch St. Thomas students react to classmate’s arrest in bomb threat.

Samantha HoangLong, Althea Larson, Abby Sliva, Justin Amaker, Rachel Torralba and Emily Haugen contributed to this report.