LONDON, Nov 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A British man with an “obsessive interest” in Covid-19 was jailed on Wednesday for more than two years after sparking a bomb scare at an AstraZeneca vaccine factory.
Anthony Collins, 54, from Kent in southeast England, sent a suspicious parcel to the factory in Wales in January, a court heard.
He also tried to send parcels to 10 Downing Street, a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Those were all intercepted, but the one sent to AstraZeneca required intervention by an army bomb disposal unit.
Defence lawyer Janice Brennan said Collins had a diagnosed personality disorder and had long laboured with an “obsessive interest” in the coronavirus and vaccines.
“He is a lonely and bored individual who does find it very difficult to deal with normal life,” she told his trial in Maidstone, Kent.
Judge David Griffith-Jones said that did not excuse his behaviour, “which was deliberately to send a bomb hoax knowing perfectly well that it would cause fear and mayhem”.
He jailed Collins for 27 months, minus time already spent in remand, on the charge of dispatching an article by mail with the intention of inducing the belief it is likely to explode. — NNN-AGENCIES
