A student with autism has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for planting a homemade bomb on a London underground train during morning rush hour.
Damon Smith, 20, constructed the rucksack bomb according to instructions in an online magazine linked to al-Qaida. Filled with ball-bearing shrapnel and using a £2 clock from Tesco as an improvised timer, the devise did not go off.
On Friday morning, he smiled in the dock at the Old Bailey in London as the judge, Richard Marks QC, sentenced him to 15 years in a young offender institution, with an extended period of five years on licence. Marks said although Smith had an interest in Islam, he was not motivated by terrorism.
Smith had pleaded guilty to perpetrating a bomb hoax, claiming he intended the device to work as a smoke bomb to stop the train “for a bit of fun”. But after a five-day trial, he was found guilty on 3 May of possession of an explosive substance with intent, contrary to the 1883 Explosive Substances Act.
Sentencing him, Marks said: “Quite what your motives were and what your true thinking was in acting as you did is difficult to discern with any degree of clarity or certainty.
“Whatever the position, the seriousness of what you did cannot be overstated, not least against the background of the fear in which we all live from the use of bombs here and around the world, an all too timely reminder of which were the events in Manchester earlier this week
