Jury finds man guilty of sending hoax bomb threats
A 61-year-old Scottish man has been convicted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court of sending two hoax bomb threat emails to Heathrow Airport from a city centre library.
Adam Busby (aged 61), with an address at Santry Lodge, Ballymun, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of sending hoax messages, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety, at Charleville Mall Public Library, North Strand on May 8 and 15, 2006.
The jury of five women and seven men returned their verdicts after approximately four hours deliberation on day seven of the trial.
Judge Desmond Hogan remanded Busby, who uses a wheelchair due to illness, in custody until his sentence date on July 23, 2010.
During the trial Mr Philip Groves, formerly Media Relations Assistant at the British Airport Authority (BAA), told Mr Dominic McGinn BL, prosecuting, that on May 8, 2006 at 10.35am he received an email in relation to a bomb scare and alerted security.
The email, which had also been sent to other addresses, came from “peoples will” with an email address “freedom.cell@yahoo.com”.
The subject line was “Bomb on aircraft” and the text of the email read: “There is an explosive device on flight BA117 en route from London Heathrow to New York.”
Mr Leigh Orwin, security manager for BAA, told Mr McGinn that when emails such as this were received a threat assessment was usually carried out and in this case the threat was graded as a low risk “green”.
He agreed that there was a flight in the air at that time en route from London to New York.
Mr Orwin said a second email with the subject line “urgent bomb” was received by the Heathrow Media Centre on May 15, 2006, at 10.43 am. It came from the email address “snla_cell@yahoo.ca” and read: “There is a bomb on flight VS003 to New York which will explode before arrival.”
He agreed with Mr McGinn that there was such a flight and that he believed it was in the air when the email was received. He said the risk assessment was again “green” and agreed it was likely no action was taken.
Gardaí were able to trace the computer that sent the emails through it’s “IP address” to Dublin City Libraries and then to a public access computer at Charleville Mall Public Library.
Librarian Mr Terry Wogan told Mr McGinn that he worked as branch manager at Charleville Mall from June 2004 to September 2007. He said members of the public could use the computers free of charge by walking into the branch to see if one was free or by pre-booking a session.
He said Mr Busby was a regular user of the library and was known to him. He said that on May 8 and 15, 2006, Mr Busby had pre-booked a session at one of the computers and a tick beside his name on the day sheets indicated that he had turned up to use the computer.
When CCTV footage from the library on May 8 and 15, 2006, was shown in the court Mr Wogan said he recognised a person using a computer on the left of the screen on each day as Mr Busby.
Detective Sergeant John Finan, of the Garda Computer Crime Investigation Unit, told Mr McGinn that he was asked to look at two computers seized from Charleville Mall library to see if there was any relevant trace evidence of emails or logs of the activities of the user.
He told Mr McGinn he found that a person using one of the computers logged onto to the email account “freedom.cell@yahoo.com” at 10.17am on May 8, 2006. The user then did a google search for “BAA” and at 10.21am went onto a site showing live flight information for Heathrow.
He said that at 10.49am there was an acknowledgement from Yahoo saying “your email has been sent” and it indicated an email had been sent to the Heathrow Media centre but did not display the contents.
Det Sgt Finan said he looked at the same hard drive for trace evidence from May 15, 2006 and found a user logged into the email account “snla_cell@yahoo.ca” at 10.45am on that date.
He said that at 10.49am there was an acknowledgement that an email had been sent to the Heathrow Media Centre. At 10.50am the user exited the account.
Det Sgt Finan told Mr McGinn that at 10.44am on May 15 the user of the computer accessed live flight information. He said the person had been using this computer from 10.15am that morning and had done a number of searches relating to Scottish matters.
