Anti-airport bomb hoaxer jailed

6th July 2009
An anti-air­port pro­test­er who sent a series of bomb hoax­es and threats to Gatwick Air­port in West Sus­sex over five-years has been jailed.

Gary Collins, from Craw­ley, took direct action against air­craft noise after suf­fer­ing from noise dis­tur­bance as a young child, Lewes Crown Court heard.

He admit­ted 34 counts of com­mu­ni­cat­ing false infor­ma­tion and three counts of send­ing hoax nox­ious sub­stances.

The 57-year-old was jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Judge Michael Law­son QC told Collins he remained a dan­ger, and said: “Air­ports are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to that sort of attack because they are respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of thou­sands of peo­ple at any one time.

“There­fore, mem­bers of the staff, the police and oth­er enforce­ment agen­cies are respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing every one of those warn­ings.”

He added: “You, in your inter­view with the pro­ba­tion ser­vice, indi­cat­ed that it was delib­er­ate and that you were not sor­ry for what you had done.

“You were sor­ry that you got caught and that if you could do it again with­out being caught, you would.”

The court heard his cam­paign was car­ried out dur­ing the Lon­don ter­ror attacks in 2005, dur­ing height­ened secu­ri­ty at air­ports in 2006, and the attack at Glas­gow Air­port in 2007.

Pros­e­cut­ing, Dale Sul­li­van said his let­ters and pack­ages were sent marked as anthrax or bio­log­i­cal mate­r­i­al.

Oth­ers stat­ed there were bombs in air­craft toi­lets or build­ings.

‘Air­port fix­a­tion’

Mr Sul­li­van said: “The impact on [air­port oper­a­tor] BAA was a seri­ous one as they were not threats they could sim­ply brush off.”

Defence coun­sel Andrew Stephens said Collins had lit­tle to do with his fam­i­ly and had only ever had spo­radic peri­ods of employ­ment.

He said: “He fix­at­ed upon Gatwick Air­port. He suf­fers from noise, noise at Gatwick in par­tic­u­lar became too much for him to bear.

“He should have sought oth­er avenues, like peti­tion­ing his MP. He chose to take a direct stance.

“Although an extreme­ly long-stand­ing cam­paign, it was a naive and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed cam­paign.”

He added: “This is a 57-year-old man who has led a dif­fi­cult life, a life which from the very out­set has gone against him.”

After the hear­ing, Det Sgt Steve Lux­ford said the term reflect­ed “the sever­i­ty and poten­tial impact this had on the air­port”.

He said the threats con­tin­ued dur­ing a time of sig­nif­i­cant ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty.

“This was a long-run­ning cam­paign by an indi­vid­ual against the run­ning of Gatwick Air­port with an inten­tion to dis­rupt and ter­rorise peo­ple,” he added.