Pro-animal bomb plotter is jailed

AN ANIMAL rights campaigner was yesterday jailed for seven years after being convicted of conspiring to cause explosions.

Jailing Anthony Humphries, 33, of Yardley Hastings, North-ampton, Judge Ian Collis also warned other activists who planned to disrupt companies that they too would be dealt with severely.

Northampton Crown Court heard that Humphries, 33, an electrician, who has three children, planned to fire bomb drug firms involved in tests on animals.

Humphries denied conspiracy to cause an explosion and possession of an explosive substance. The jury, which took more than three hours to convict Humphries on both charges, heard that he was arrested in January last year after police watched two men coming and going from an alleged bomb making factory at a flat in Northampton. Humphries visited the flat regularly.

"The objective of this conspiracy was either to endanger life or cause serious injury," said the judge. "These devices were in an advanced stage of preparation. All that was required was a battery to set them off.

"It must be clearly understood by activists of whatever sort or whatever cause that seeking to disrupt companies, people's lives or whatever has got to be dealt with by severe sentences."

Humphries was said to be a committed animal welfare campaigner. He was given seven years on the conspiracy charge and two years for possession to run concurrently.