London Met student given 15 years for planting bomb on Tube

A London Metropolitan University student has been jailed for 15 years for planting a home-made bomb on a busy Tube train.

Weapons-obsessed Damon Smith was arrested in a dramatic police raid in Holloway Road, near to the university, on October 21 last year.

He built the device at home with a £2 clock from Tesco, after finding an article entitled “Make A Bomb In The Kitchen Of Your Mom”. He had left the package on a train at North Greenwich station the day before. It was spotted by passengers who raised the alarm.

Smith, 20, claimed it was a Halloween prank but was recently found guilty of possession of an explosive substance with intent following an Old Bailey trial.

And today, the autistic defendant smiled in the dock as Judge Richard Marks sentenced him to 15 years in a young offenders’ institution.

The judge made clear he was not motivated by terrorism. But he told the defendant: “Quite what your motives were and what your true thinking was in acting as you did is difficult to discern with any degree of clarity or certainty.

“Whatever the position, the seriousness of what you did cannot be overstated, not least against the background of the fear in which we all live from the use of bombs here and around the world, an all too timely reminder of which were the events in Manchester earlier this week.”

Reporting by Press Association