Manuel Marraco Madrid

Madrid

Updated Monday, January 22, 2024-12:20

The National Court has tried this Monday a young British man whom the prosecutor accuses of public disorder and the

Ministry of Defense

demands 94,782.47 euros: what it cost to send a

Eurofighter

to escort the plane in which he was flying.

On July 3, 2022, before taking off from London to Menorca, Aditya V. sent friends a private message on Snapchat.

It consisted of a photo of the check-in area at Gatwick Airport, accompanied by these words: "on my way to fly the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)."

When the device was already over France, the British intelligence services detected the message and alerted Spain.

Defense sent a Eurofighter fighter to escort the commercial plane, which landed without problems.

Today the young man explained to the Central Criminal Judge that the message was "a joke" that he only shared with a small group of friends.

And the reason was that, due to his Hindu traits, jokes related to terrorism had always been made to him at school.

He has recalled that he saw the fighter that accompanied them on the last leg of the trip, but he did not associate it with his message, but rather with training for the war in Ukraine.

The prosecutor accuses him of one of the variants of public disorder: "Whoever falsely states or simulates a situation of danger for the community or the production of an accident as a result of which it is necessary to provide aid to another, and thereby provokes the mobilization of police, assistance or rescue services, will be punished with a prison sentence of three months and one day to one year or a fine of three to eighteen months."

Prosecutor Pedro Rubira demands a fine of 22,500 euros, in addition to compensating Defense with the cost of the Eurofighter flight.

The Ministry itself directly claims that amount through the State Attorney's Office.

The accused's lawyer asks for acquittal and has highlighted, like the accused himself in his responses, that he did not intend to raise any alarm or create any danger.

She has highlighted that only her friends knew the message and that what could have been an intrusion into the defendant's privacy by the British security services.