Scorned Man Sends Bomb Threat and Makes it Appear Estranged Wife Sent It!

A scorned husband who tried to get his estranged wife arrested by emailing MI5 and claiming she had planted a bomb at a junior school was jailed for 16 months today.

Crazed Ghulam Kibria, 33, caused panic after he sent a chilling bomb threat to the security service’s website. He pretended to be his wife when he clicked on the MI5 'contact us' section of the site and wrote: 'There is a bomb planted in Prince Albert Junior and Infant School in Aston. There is nothing you can do - we can strike anytime, anywhere.'

Anti-terror police evacuated all 700 pupils and 110 staff at the school in Birmingham just seven minutes after receiving the email on November 8 last year.

Kibria was jailed for 16 months after he pleaded guilty to communicating a bomb hoax. Sentencing him at Birmingham Crown Court Judge John Maxwell said: 'The motive, we can be quite clear, was not to disrupt the school, to disrupt the neighbourhood, the motive was one of malice against the ex-wife to get her into trouble.

'You lived a perfectly respectable life until your life was turned upside down by an extremely unhappy marriage. You genuinely believe that your wife has committed great evil against you and so is the depth of your belief in that it has pushed you into a mental illness. You decided to get revenge against your ex-wife and you decided to issue a bomb hoax in her name and the motive simply that you were trying to get her arrested. It caused great fear. There was nothing short of panic. It was an offence that was inspired by malice and revenge.'

Kibria sent the email, which included the name and address of his ex-wife, to MI5 at 1.53pm. By 2pm all staff and pupils had been evacuated and police put a 100m exclusion zone around the school after the threat was taken 'considerably seriously' by MI5, the court heard. Children as young as three were carried outside in the freezing temperatures after the evacuation came while pupils changed for a PE lesson.

The court heard a 100-metre police cordon was set up around the school following the threat and two search teams of six officers in each were deployed to the school, along with an explosive detection dog and handler. Anti-terrorism officers swooped on Kibria’s ex-wife’s home who denied sending the threat. Officers arrested Kibria in Lidget Green, Bradford and seized his laptop which proved he had sent the message to MI5.

Kathryn Roughton, prosecuting, told the court, Kibria harboured a 'very profound and deep seated sense of resentment' towards his ex-wife. Regan Beggs, defending, said Kibria had suffered psychiatric difficulties but was not on medication when he sent the email.

Speaking after the hearing, Detective Inspector Neil Corrigan said: 'We take hoax bomb reports very seriously and will always work to bring offenders before the courts. 'Kibria’s actions wasted a significant amount of police time and resources, and could have taken officers away from more urgent matters. It also caused considerable inconvenience to teachers, pupils and parents at the school. We hope the fact that Kibria has been given a custodial sentence will act as a warning to others not to act so irresponsibly.'

original article found here

Facebook Threats Trial Begins

by Peter Hall

(PENNSYLVANIA, USA) Anthony Douglas Elonis' alleged Facebook threats to attack Dorney Park, kill his wife and slaughter a class of kindergartners scared some and terrified others, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

But when a jury weighs the evidence against Elonis, it won't have to consider whether he intended to threaten those people, but rather that he knew it could be perceived as a threat.

Testimony in Elonis' trial on five counts of making threats under the federal cyber stalking law began Monday, with FBI Special Agent Denise Stevens explaining how Elonis attracted the agency's attention.

Elonis, 28, was arrested in December after authorities executed a search warrant at his parents' home on Schwab Avenue, Lower Saucon Township.

Shortly after Elonis was fired in October 2010 from his job at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in South Whitehall Township for making a Facebook post that his co-workers perceived as threatening, the park's chief of security, Daniel Hall, contacted the FBI.

He was concerned, Stevens said, about Elonis' subsequent Facebook messages under the user name Tone Dougie describing himself as a nuclear bomb, and warning that his employers had "[expletive] with the timer."

Another message, which included a "disclaimer" that the words were fictitious lyrics and an exercise of the constitutional right to free expression, described Elonis' fantasy of a pair of twin-engine Cessna aircraft crashing into the amusement park in an apparent reference to the 9/11 World Trade Center attack.

Questioned by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherri A. Stephan, Stevens said the disclaimer, and similar language in a post Elonis made about killing his estranged wife, did little to ease her worries.

"To me, it made them almost more threatening," Stevens said.

Stevens read each of Elonis' messages from Facebook screen shots displayed on TV screens for the jurors.

In a Nov. 6 post about his wife, Elonis wrote it was illegal, under the terms of a protection-from-abuse order, to say he wanted to kill her. He noted it was also illegal to describe the best way to launch a mortar attack on her home.

In a Nov. 15 post, Elonis wrote: "Fold up your PFA and put it in your pocket. Is it thick enough to stop a bullet?" It ended with a declaration that he had enough explosives to "take care of the State Police and the Sheriff's Department."

The next day, Elonis wrote, "That's it, I've had about enough. I'm checking out and making a name for myself. Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined. And hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a Kindergarten class. The only question is which one?"

Stevens, who had been monitoring Elonis' Facebook posts, alerted the Lower Saucon police and surrounding school districts, she said.

In his opening argument, Elonis' attorney Benjamin Cooper asked the jury of seven women and five men to consider the context of Elonis' writing. He had recently lost his job and his wife had filed for divorce and taken away their two children.

"Mr. Elonis felt the impact of all that and he wrote about it in this medium called Facebook," Cooper said, noting that rap music contains similar violent imagery.

In an August court filing asking U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel to throw out the charges against Elonis, Cooper argued they are unconstitutional because they criminalize speech protected by the First Amendment.

He argued that Elonis' Facebook posts don't fall into one of the narrow exceptions to constitutionally protected speech called "true threats," in which the writer intends to place the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.

Rather, they were crude lyrical expressions of his frustration about life.

In response, Stephan wrote that the federal law prohibiting the transmission of threats -- the cyber stalking law -- doesn't require the government prove that a writer intended to make a threat, only that he knowingly made a statement that made the recipient fearful.

In a ruling from the bench Monday, Stengel agreed.

The trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday with testimony from Elonis' wife and Dorney Park employees.

original article found here