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Date Published: 26/01/2024
Brit behind 2022 easyJet bomb hoax acquitted in Spanish court
The student joked to friends that he was going to blow up a plane two years ago
A Spanish court has cleared British citizen Aditya Verma of the crime of public disorder after he joked to friends on Snapchat about blowing up an easyJet flight from London Gatwick to Menorca in 2022.
The message, which was sent privately to friends in July 2022, read: “On my way to blow up the plane. I’m a member of the Taliban.”
Mr Verma’s trial was held at the National Court in Madrid this Monday, January 22, 18 months after the incident took place.
The judge in the case ruled that “no explosive... was found that would lead one to believe it was a real threat”.
Indeed, Verma maintains it was a joke that was sent in a private Snapchat group and which was never meant to “cause public distress”.
That message, which he sent shortly before boarding the plane, was picked up by UK security services, who alerted the Spanish authorities while the plane was still in the air.
As a security measure, Spain scrambled two F-18 fighter jets to flank the aircraft until it landed at Menorca airport, where it was searched for explosives.
Verma, who was just 18 years old at the time, was arrested and held in a Spanish police cell for two days. He was later released on bail.
In his trial, he was facing a fine of over 100,000 euros, most of which was to cover the expenses of the jets being scrambled.
Part of Verma’s defence rested on the issue of how the private message could have been accessed by security forces, given that Snapchat is an encrypted app.
The theory that was raised in the trial was that it could have been intercepted via Gatwick Airport’s Wi-Fi network, but a spokesperson for the airport has assured that its network “does not have that capability”.
In the judge’s ruling this week, he said the message, “for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace”.
He continued that the message was made “in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so the accused could not even remotely assume... that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message.”
However, the judge did note that the UK security forces were “not the subject of evidence in this trial”.
A spokesperson for Snapchat said the social media platform would not “comment on what's happened in this individual case”.
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