Boy, 3, sent to school with ‘I am a bomb’ T-shirt

A woman who sent her three-year-old son — called Jihad — to school in a T-shirt marked “Jihad, Born September 11, I am a bomb” was fined and given a suspended jail sentence by a French court.

Bouchra Bagour was found guilty of condoning a criminal act, along with her brother Zeyad, who bought the child the T-shirt recalling Islamist militant group al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York on Sept 11, 2001, that killed close to 3,000 people.

The matter ended up in court after Jihad went to his nursery school in Sept 2012 wearing the T-shirt, upsetting staff and prompting a local official to take legal action.

Overturning an earlier acquittal, the appeals court in Nimes fined the woman €2,000 and gave her a one-year suspended jail sentence, doubling that fine and suspended jail sentence for the uncle.

Bagour, 35 at the time of the first ruling, had admitted that sending her child to school wearing the T-shirt had been “tactless”, but insisted it was not meant as provocation.

Her brother Zeyad, 29 at the time, told the court: “We were never trying to claim responsibility for this thing or defend a cause.”

The lawyer for the pair said the decision was “harsh and surprising”.