Prisoner jailed for bomb threat

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A former English teacher who threatened to blow up a Hampshire hospital with a car bomb has been jailed for 16 months.

It was the second time in a year that Saeed Ghafoor, 34, of Eastleigh, Hampshire, was jailed at the Old Bailey for threatening a bomb attack.

In June 2008 he was jailed for a year for telling police he would blow up the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.

He admitted, while in jail, threatening to damage property by blowing up Southampton General Hospital.

Ghafoor made both threats while he was in prison.

The threat against Bluewater - which he said he thought was in Exeter - was made in February last year while he was serving a 12-month sentence for threats to kill his sister and assault.

[Prison] is not doing him much good and is costing the taxpayer money Judge Mr Justice Calvert-Smith

He was due to be released in December last year, after serving half of his sentence, but made his next threat before that in October.

His new sentence will run when the current term runs out in June.

Judge Mr Justice Calvert-Smith said the prison psychiatrist and the probation service could not recommend any other way of dealing with him.

But he said he hoped some "imaginative thinking" would be used in the prison system to stop Ghafoor making more threats.

"It is not doing him much good and is costing the taxpayer money," he said.

"It is not a suitable environment for him."

Piers Arnold, prosecuting, told the court that Ghafoor was being held in the healthcare unit of Belmarsh prison when he told police: "I support al Qaida. An atrocity is justified."

Ghafoor said he was not thinking of a suicide mission but could not say how he would detonate gas canisters he said he would use in the vehicle, Mr Arnold said.

The threat was taken seriously as Ghafoor was a local man who knew the hospital.

Roy Brown, defending, unsuccessfully asked for a fuller psychiatric assessment of his client.

He said: "He is a fantasist but not all fantasists are harmless.

"What is striking is that he was positively enthusiastic in wanting to enter a guilty plea."