{"id":7199,"date":"2017-05-03T10:15:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T14:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=7199"},"modified":"2017-05-03T10:15:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T14:15:44","slug":"damon-smith-student-facing-years-jail-found-guilty-planting-bomb-busy-tube-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2017\/05\/03\/damon-smith-student-facing-years-jail-found-guilty-planting-bomb-busy-tube-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Damon Smith: Student facing years in jail after being found guilty of planting bomb on busy Tube train"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tom Powell<\/a>

A weapons-obsessed student is facing years behind bars after being found guilty of planting a home-made bomb on a busy Jubilee line<\/a> train.\u00a0 Former altar boy Damon Smith built the device at home with a \u00a32 clock from Tesco after googling an al Qaida article.\u00a0 Smith, 20, denied possession of an explosive substance with intent but admitted the lesser offence of making a bomb hoax.\u00a0 Although Smith’s barrister told jurors he was no “hate-filled jihadi” and never meant to harm anyone, an Old Bailey jury rejected his explanation and found Smith guilty of the more serious charge after deliberating for two hours.\u00a0 He made no reaction in the dock as the verdict was given.<\/p>\n

On the morning of October 20 last year, Smith, then aged 19, packed a rucksack with explosives and ball bearing shrapnel as he heading off to college in Holloway, north London.\u00a0 He was caught on CCTV as he travelled on the Jubilee Line, casually flicking through a text book before getting off and leaving the bag on the floor, timed to go off within minutes.\u00a0 At least 10 passengers were in the carriage at the time and some of them spotted the abandoned rucksack and alerted the driver.\u00a0 But the driver at first dismissed it as lost property and took it into his cab and carried on towards North Greenwich, jurors were told.\u00a0 During the journey he spotted wires coming out and he raised the alarm as he pulled into the station.<\/p>\n

Had Smith’s bomb gone off, it would have exploded just as commuters were being ordered off the platform, the jury heard.<\/p>\n

The defendant went on to college and, on returning home in the evening, checked the internet for news of what he had done. Upon his arrest, the autistic student admitted making the bomb but claimed he only meant it to spew harmless smoke as a Halloween joke.\u00a0 He told police he had been inspired from watching someone on a YouTube channel called Troll Station making a bomb prank.\u00a0 A search of Smith’s home in Rotherhithe, south London, revealed his fixation with guns, explosives and other weapons.\u00a0 Police seized a blank-firing self-loading pistol and a BB gun, both bought legally, as well as a knuckleduster and a knife which he showed off in an online video.\u00a0 Pictures were also recovered of Smith with guns, including one on a laptop labelled “2016 an Islamic State fighter”.\u00a0 Smith watched YouTube videos on explosions and posted a picture of himself on Facebook in a Guy Fawkes mask holding handcuffs and a knuckleduster, jurors were told.\u00a0 He professed to be interested in Islam as “more true” than Christianity, but denied being an extremist.\u00a0 He posed next to an image of the Brussels-born Islamic terrorist alleged to have masterminded the attacks in Paris in November 2015, the court heard.<\/p>\n

In his defence, extracts of a psychiatric report were read out in court confirming an autism spectrum disorder.\u00a0 He had been interested in bomb-making since the age of 10 and said that it was “something to do when he was bored”.\u00a0 Smith, who grew up living with his mother in Newton Abbot, Devon, said he had thought about putting a bomb in a park but decided it would be “more funny” to delay train passengers instead.\u00a0 His barrister, Richard Carey-Hughes QC, told jurors that Smith was no “hate-filled jihadi”, saying he intended to “make something that looked like a bomb but not function as one”.<\/p>\n

Source and full article standard.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tom Powell A weapons-obsessed student is facing years behind bars after being found guilty of planting a home-made bomb on a busy Jubilee line train.\u00a0 Former altar boy Damon Smith built the device at […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":7200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[3415],"class_list":{"0":"post-7199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-tube-bomb","10":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7202,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions\/7202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}