Emirates passenger jailed over drunken bomb threat
AFP reports that a Briton who sparked a bomb alert on an Emirates flight from Manchester to Dubai in July while he was drunk was sentenced to four months in prison in the Gulf emirate on Wednesday.
Mark Winterbottom, 37, will be deported after serving his sentence and has also been fined 1000 dirhams (A$342), presiding judge Fahmi Munir Fahmi said.
Winterbottom, who said he had been “joking” when he triggered the bomb alert, appeared briefly in the dock to hear the sentence in a Dubai court.
During a hearing on September 10, Winterbottom, who caused panic by claiming he had a bomb that would explode in seven minutes, pleaded not guilty to attacking a civilian airliner but admitted he had been drinking.
“I was drunk.” “I was unaware of what I was doing… I did not assault the flight attendant.” “I did not assault the passengers but I was trying to defend myself,” the local press quoted him as saying.
“It was a joke,” he said.
Dubai’s Emirates airline said Winterbottom sparked the bomb alert as its flight from England landed in Dubai. An official said he had an argument with a crew member and then claimed a bomb was on the aircraft, which was later searched and no explosives were found.
The public prosecution charged him with assaulting the aircraft and passengers as well as drunkenness.
Two other Britons are currently on trial in Dubai on charges of having sex on a beach in the bustling city state, which is home to around 100,000 British nationals and a favourite tourist destination for Britons.
Another 20,000 Britons live elsewhere in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, and around one million British nationals visited the country in 2007.
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