| Hateland -
Articles |
03/07/00 - London Bombing Suspect
Found Guilty
A white supremacist was found guilty of murder Friday
and sentenced to six life sentences after a spate of bombings
against minorities in London that killed three people
and injured more than 100 others.
David Copeland, 24, showed no emotion as the jury's verdict
was read, but people in the public gallery - including
victims injured in the bomb attacks - clapped and
cheered.
"May you rot in hell," Bob Moore, whose son
Nik was among those killed, said as Copeland was led back
to his cell.
Judge Michael Hyam sentenced the bomber to six life
sentences - one for each of the three people killed
and another for each bomb planted over a 13-day period
in April 1999.
"It is only too apparent from what you have said
you have no feelings for those lives you have afflicted,"
the judge said at the Old Bailey criminal court.
Copeland had admitted planting the bombs, but argued
that because of mental illness he should only be found
guilty of manslaughter.
The first nail bomb exploded in Brixton, a south London
neighborhood with a large black population, on April
17, 1999. The second detonated a week later in east
London's Brick Lane, a center of the Bangladeshi community.
The third tore through a popular gay bar in central
London's Soho entertainment district on April 30, 1999.
A pregnant 27-year-old woman and two male friends were
killed and 70 people were injured when the bomb -
packed with 1,500 nails - exploded in the crowded
Admiral Duncan pub.
During the four-week trial, psychiatrists for the defense
had testified that Copeland, an engineer from the commuter
town of Farnborough, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
Prosecutor Nigel Sweeney told jurors that Copeland
was a homophobic, Nazi sympathizer who dreamed of starting
a "race war."
"He told [police] that he was a National Socialist
or Nazi, who believed in a white master race,"
Sweeney said. "He didn't like either black people
or Asian people and wanted them out of this country.
He thought British people had the right to ethnic cleansing
like the Serbs."
Sweeney added that Copeland "thought his bombs would
be the spark to set fire to this country and would set
off a racial war and get whites to vote for the (neo-Nazi)
British National Party." |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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