© Ozan KOSEApreda emailed Britain's National Health Service threatening to send a parcel bomb to a hospital unless he received £10 million ($14 million) in Bitcoin
A man who attempted to blackmail the British health service by threatening to bomb hospitals was sentenced to three years in prison by a court in Germany on Friday.
The 33-year-old, named by British investigators as Emil Apreda, was found guilty of attempted extortion by district court in Tiergarten, Berlin.
The trial was the result of "intense investigations" and "close co-operation between German and British authorities", the court said in a statement.
An Italian living in Berlin, Apreda was arrested by German police last June on suspicion of being behind a string of threats to carry out bombings on British soil in spring and summer last year.
In April 2020, at the height of the first coronavirus lockdown in Britain, Apreda sent an email to the British national health service (NHS) threatening to send a parcel bomb to a hospital unless he received £10 million ($14 million) in Bitcoin.
In the following months he sent further emails threatening to attack not only hospitals, but also parliamentarians and protesters, the court said.
"This was one of the most significant threats we have seen in quite some time to UK infrastructure," said Tim Court, head of investigations at Britain's national cybercrime unit.
As well as hospitals, Apreda threatened to place a bomb at a Black Lives Matter protest and attack British members of parliament on the anniversary of the death of Jo Cox, an MP murdered by a far-right extremist in 2016.
Investigators said that he sent a total of 18 emails over the course of six weeks to the NHS and the National Crime Agency.
They added that Apreda used anti-Semitic language in his emails and purported to be a member of Combat 18, a violent far-right group which was banned in Germany last year.
Having used "various layers of encryption and obfuscation" to hide his identity, Apreda was eventually identified by German police with the help of a British behavioural science unit.
At the trial in Berlin, the judge noted that Apreda did not have the means to carry out his threats, and confirmed that the NHS did not comply with his demands for money.
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