Where’s Friar Tuck when you need him?

A quip on Twitter by a snowbound traveller has led to his arrest and bailing on suspicion of communicating a bomb hoax…

Frustrated by delays at Robin Hood airport, near Doncaster, 26-year-old Paul Chambers keyed in: “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” Police knocked on his door in Doncaster shortly afterwards and arrested him under the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Bailed after more than six hours of questioning, Chambers also had his computer and iPhone briefly confiscated and the message was deleted from Twitter’s website. Tweets of support and incredulity have since been posted by some of the 769 people regularly following his page, along with requests for interviews from journalists.

South Yorkshire police said that Chambers remained bailed because of the Twitter comment and added: “We advise members of the public to use such sites appropriately, as they are easily accessible to the public and any inappropriate use could cause unnecessary concern and lead to comments being reported to police…”

Chambers describes himself on his Twitter profile as a “film-watching, football-loving, rubbish-talking, hyphen-using idiot”. His tweets are kept locked, which means that only followers accepted by him can see them, rather than the public at large.

Be forewarned!




  1. deowll says:

    He needs to un friend somebody.

  2. Nobody says:

    So were the police following his tweets?
    Or how did they get a warrant for a communications intercept before he had sent this?
    Was he already under suspicion for terrorism?

  3. yanikinwaoz says:

    Sounds like a threat to me. Whats the problem?

  4. Mac Guy says:

    Based off that one tweet, I don’t see how anyone could confused it for anything BUT a threat.

    That’s like waving a toy gun in a synagogue and hollering something anti-semitic, then saying, “oh, just kidding.”

    If you didn’t expect a reaction, your stay in the gene pool is no longer welcome.

  5. FRAGaLOT says:

    thank you Osama Bin Laden for making U.S. citizens have knee-jerk reactions to every meaningless little fucking thing that happens here, even after 8 years. And making us go see therapists over the so-called crimes we have done. Don’t we all feel safe now?

  6. Nobody says:

    Several other northerners have been arrested after a night at the pub when they were heard to say “Eeh I could murder an Indian”

  7. # 2 Nobody
    There is nothing in the reports that say he was previously under suspicion, no prior warrant was issued or indication that anyone following his tweets reported the remark.
    All electronic communication can be easily monitored by the secret ‘security’ services. Written text is filtered for key-words and phrases and phone conversations can be automatically processed in the same way after conversion to text.
    If you want to find out more about how this is done, a good starting point would be to google for “AT&T NSA room” or “Echelon”.

  8. Right, so when some snowboarded tweets, he gets arrested, but when the father of the guy with the underpants bomb told the secret service that he thought his son was a risk, everyone ignored him. Hum…..

  9. dave knows says:

    indeed this is rubbish more community cohesion and dehumization at work here.

    Also they probably used the polices elusive six sense which apperntly has a luck factor to it as well.

  10. dave knows says:

    indeed this is rubbish more community cohesion and dehumization at work here.

    Also they probably used the polices elusive six sense which apparently has a luck factor to it as well.


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