A school caretaker terrorised the public with a four-week letter-bomb campaign which he staged as a protest against the “surveillance society”, a court was told yesterday.
Miles Cooper, 27, used children’s party poppers to make packages that were designed to fire nails or shards of glass when they were opened.
He posted seven devices to businesses connected with security, DNA testing, criminal records data and road cameras in January and February. Oxford Crown Court was told that five of the bombs exploded, injuring eight people, including a pregnant woman. The injuries included cuts, burns and loss of hearing.
– The Times
A school caretaker who sent seven letter bombs to science labs and offices had turned his bedroom into a bomb factory, a court heard yesterday.
A jury at Oxford crown court was told that police who raided Miles Cooper’s home in Cambridge at 3am one morning early this year found three further devices “assembled, packaged and more or less ready to go”.
Cooper, 27, of Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, admits sending bombs constructed out of party poppers and nails or broken glass to three forensic science labs, a security company, the headquarters of Capita, the company that administers the London congestion charge, a speed camera company and the DVLA in Swansea.
– The Guardian
A private security firm has been secretly investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann for four months because her parents feared that Portuguese police were failing properly to search for their daughter.
Control Risks Group (CRG) is believed to have been checking reported sightings of Madeleine from around the world and building up profiles of likely abductors.
– The Times