Four months for train bomb threat

A man who threatened to blow up a train and shouted "you Britons and Americans are killing all my people" has been sentenced to four months in jail.

Mohammed Ashraf Hakeem, 42, from Glasgow, made the threat on a train as it pulled into Paisley Gilmour Street. He was found guilty of a racially aggravated breach of the peace.

Sentencing at Paisley Sheriff Court, Sheriff Bill Dunlop said: "You terrorised those people on that train. They were genuinely scared."

He added: "In these days of real terrorists, we cannot have people going around on public transport pretending to be terrorists."

Hakeem, an unemployed waiter, made the threat on 30 December, 2005, on a Glasgow to Gourock train. He stood in the train carriage and said: "I could bomb the lot of you in a second if I wanted to." Witnesses told how they became so anxious that they got up and moved.

Sheriff Dunlop said: "You chose deliberately to mention Britons and Americans.

"Set against the appalling events of last year, I cannot imagine a clearer case of racial aggravation."

The court heard Hakeem had been little more than a "sad, pathetic drunk" who had been disowned by his family due to his excessive drinking.

SOURCE: BBC