A librarian has been jailed for making a hoax bomb threat because he was late for his flight.
Jacob Meir Abdellak was running late for the Norwegian flight from Gatwick to Los Angeles, so he decided to contact the police to report the threat.
He was handed a 10-month sentence and ordered to pay a £140 victim surcharge when he appeared at Lewes Crown Court on Tuesday, Sussex Police said.
The anonymous call was made at 5.47am on May 11 – just eight minutes before the flight was due to depart, causing it to be delayed by 90 minutes.
Gatwick Airport investigated and found Abdellak was significantly late for the flight and was denied boarding by airline staff, who he became abusive towards.
Later his phone number was linked to the hoax call and his booking.
The 47-year-old, of Amhurst Park, Hackney, London, was arrested on May 22 when he returned to board another USA-bound flight.
On the first day of his trial, after previously denying the charge, he admitted communicating false information regarding a noxious substance likely to create serious risk to human health.
The French national initially claimed he had lost his SIM card a few days earlier so the call could not have been made by him.
On Thursday, Gatwick Police chief inspector Marc Clothier said: “This was a quite ridiculous decision made by Abdellak, who fabricated an extremely serious allegation purely for his own benefit.
“His actions caused the flight to be delayed, and also caused a level of fear and distress among a number of staff and passengers on board that flight.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article