The National Court has acquitted a young British man tried for sending a message to a group of friends with the threat of blowing up an EasyJet plane that was traveling to Menorca in July 2022. The bomb threat caused the Army to mobilize a Eurofighter fighter plane so that it could be intercepted and monitor the ship in anticipation that the threat was real.
The Prosecutor’s Office of the National Court and the State Attorney’s Office requested for the 19-year-old young man, a native of India and with a British passport, a sentence of a fine of 22,500 euros for a crime of public disorder, as well as compensation for civil liability of 94,782 euros. in favor of the Ministry of Defense for the cost of mobilizing the military aircraft. The young man has finally been acquitted.
The sentence by Judge José Manuel Fernández Prieto details that the accused sent the message to a private Snapchat group that he had with six friends with whom he was traveling in which a photograph of himself appeared and a text in English that said: “On the way to fly the plane (I am a member of the Taliban)”. United Kingdom security mechanisms detected this message when the plane was flying over French airspace, so the Spanish authorities were notified and deployed a Eurofighter plane that escorted the commercial flight to Menorca.
Once on the ground, it was proven that the supposed threat was not real as no explosives or objects or instruments were found to confirm it. Once the plane of passengers and crew was evacuated in compliance with the security protocol, the agents accessed the interior of the aircraft. The passengers were alerted by the circumstances of the landing since the vast majority were aware that something abnormal was happening in the presence of the Army fighter.
The young man was arrested by Civil Guard agents in Menorca and taken to police stations to take a statement and clarify what happened. Five other young people were also transported with him as witnesses. They were the companions with whom he traveled on vacation from the United Kingdom to Menorca.
The judge considers that the young man should be acquitted because an intention to provoke the mobilization of the army plane, “or any other police, assistance or rescue service” is not revealed “or remotely inferred”, as required by the legal provision of the article 561 of the Penal Code in its current wording.
“It cannot be ignored that the aforementioned message and the photograph are not sent to any official body, nor is it given any publicity, which would inevitably lead to the corresponding mobilization of the pertinent police, assistance or rescue services, which is revealed as the most appropriate if the aim is to provoke the mobilization of these services. On the contrary, they are carried out in a strictly private environment, between the accused and his friends with whom he flies, through a private group to which only they have access, Therefore, the accused could not even remotely assume (as he expressly points out in the trial) that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, or by third parties other than his friends who received the message. secures the sentence.
The judge states that it is unknown how the British services came to know about the photograph and message sent, as they were not the subject of evidence at the trial, although, he insists, the accused is not attributed an intention to mobilize the indicated services. The magistrate refers to the suggestion in the trial that perhaps it was one of the friends who revealed the message, so the judge points out that its public dissemination by a third party would cause the crime to be committed by this third party, not the accused.
