School caretaker in UK convicted of letter bomb 'protests'

A primary school caretaker in the UK was convicted today of masterminding a nationwide letter bomb campaign which left eight people injured and struck fear into many more.

It took a jury at Oxford Crown Court just one hour to find Miles Cooper, 27, guilty of all 11 charges against him.

Recipients who opened Cooper’s padded envelopes were showered in glass fragments or nails, the four-day trial heard.

Cooper said he sent the seven letters, five of which exploded, in protest at Britain’s “authoritarian” Government.

He said he resorted to violent means as his peaceful protests against measures imposed by Tony Blair’s administration had fallen on deaf ears.

Offices in London, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Kent, Birmingham and Swansea were targeted by Cooper in January and February.

When police swooped on his home in Cherry Hinton, near Cambridge, they discovered “a bomb factory” in his bedroom with three more devices ready to send.

Cooper said: “The overall goal was to shut down certain departments in certain buildings and ultimately to highlight my cause.”

He denied eight counts of causing bodily injury by means of an explosive substance, two counts of using an explosive substance with intent to disable, one count of making explosives and one alternative count of possessing an explosive substance.

He did not deny sending the letters to three forensic science laboratories, a computer company, an accountancy firm, the DVLA and a residential address, but did deny intending to cause any injury.

Adjourning sentencing until tomorrow, Judge Julian Hall said: “They are verdicts with which I wholeheartedly agree. And in view of the line the defence took, I think they were inevitable.”

George Wingfield, one of Cooper’s victims, in court to witness his conviction, said: “I’m as happy as I can be I suppose.”

Earlier, Cooper said in evidence that his anger at the authorities intensified when his father Clive was unable to get DNA samples removed from the police database after he was cleared in 2003 of assault.

“I felt my father had been used and I felt unable to do anything about it,” he said.

It was then he turned his boyhood fascination with weaponry to terrifying effect – making and sending bombs.

Before this, Cooper had campaigned against the Labour Government’s proposals to introduce ID cards. But after the episode with his father, his approach changed.

The treatment of anti-nuclear protesters further angered him, as did that of Walter Wolfgang, then 82, being thrown out of the 2005 Labour Party conference for heckling then foreign secretary Jack Straw, he said.

“It became more and more obvious that the Government was not going to listen to peaceful protesters and in fact they were starting to use anti-terror legislation against them,” Cooper said.

“If you give a small group of people (the Government) too much power, they will eventually end up abusing it. Based on what I learned at school and learned from history books, an authoritarian state eventually develops, and free speech is stifled.”

Of Britain’s “surveillance society”, he said: “We are one of the most watched societies on the planet.”

Cooper accepted the recipients of his letters were likely to suffer cuts and bruises when opening the packages but he said he intended no serious harm.

“The overall goal was to shut down certain departments in certain buildings and ultimately to highlight my cause,” he said.

“I am genuinely ashamed of what I’ve done.”

The devices caused widespread alarm. Michelle Evans, receptionist for Orchid Cellmark in Culham, was pregnant when she opened the first letter, which exploded causing a small fragment to enter her thumb.

The return address read “Dr Barry Horne RIP”. Horne was a notorious animal rights terrorist who starved himself to death several years ago during a long sentence.

The envelope also bore the logo ALF – Animal Liberation Front. These animal rights references were designed to confuse police, Cooper said.

The same day, LGC Forensics in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham received similar devices.

A fourth device was addressed to Alpha Security at the home address of the company boss in Kent.

A fifth was received at Capita’s London office, from which the congestion charge is run, days later on February 5. A sixth arrived at Vantis, an administrator of speed cameras, on February 6, the court heard. The final device arrived at the DVLA in Swansea later that week.