Aditya Verma (R)’s one-day trial at Spain’s National Court took place earlier this week.
A Spanish court has acquitted a British man of public order offenses after he joked to friends that he had blown up a flight from London Gatwick to Menorca.
Aditya Verma admitted to telling friends in July 2022, “I’m going to blow up a plane. I’m part of the Taliban.”
But he said he made the joke in a private Snapchat group and did not intend to “embarrass the public.”
A Madrid judge ruled that “no explosives were found that would lead us to believe that there was a real threat.”
Verma’s trial took place on Monday at the National Court of Justice in the Spanish capital, a year and a half after the incident occurred.
Messages he sent to friends before boarding the plane went on to be picked up by British security services. They then alerted Spanish authorities while the EasyJet plane was still in flight.
Two Spanish F-18 fighter jets were dispatched to flank the aircraft. One person followed the plane until it landed on the island of Menorca, where it was searched.
Verma, who was 18 at the time, was arrested and held in a Spanish police cell for two days. He was later released on bail.
Earlier, a judge cleared Mr Verma, of Orpington, Kent, of any wrongdoing.
If found guilty, the university student faced a fine of up to €22,500 (£19,300) and a further €95,000 in costs for a scrambled jet.
image source, Marcus Toll/Reuters
One of two Spanish F18 fighter jets seen from the window of an EasyJet flight from London to Menorca
A key question in the case was how the messages were leaked, given that Snapchat is an encrypted app.
One of the theories put forward at the trial was that it could have been intercepted via Gatwick’s Wi-Fi network. However, an airport spokesperson told BBC News that the airport’s network “doesn’t have that capability”.
The judge’s decision, quoted by the European Press Agency, said the message was “detected by British security services while the plane was flying over French airspace for unknown reasons.”
Because the messages were “conducted in a strictly private environment between the defendant and a friend who traveled with him on the plane, through a private group that only they had access to, the defendant did not believe that the joke that the defendant made on the flight was “The Friends could not in the slightest infer that the message could be intercepted or detected by the British authorities or by a third party other than the Friends who received the message,” the judgment added.
It was not immediately clear how British authorities were alerted to the messages, with the judge saying: “They are not the subject of evidence in this trial.”
A Snapchat spokesperson said the social media platform “does not comment on what happened in this individual incident.”
In a section of its website titled “How We Work with Law Enforcement,” Snapchat states that one of Snapchat’s goals is “to create a safe and fun environment where Snapchatters can freely express themselves and stay in touch with real friends.” It is said that the goal is to maintain the
Additionally, “We also encourage law enforcement to proactively escalate content we believe involves an imminent threat to life, such as school shooting threats, bomb threats, and missing person cases.” We are committed to responding to urgent data disclosure requests from law enforcement agencies.” We handle cases involving an immediate threat to life.
“For emergency disclosure requests from law enforcement, our 24/7 team typically responds within 30 minutes.”
Additional reporting by Laura Gozzi and Monica Soriano