British court jails Covid denier over terror threats

A UK judge on Monday sentenced an alleged conspiracy theorist to five years in prison for encouraging terrorism in social media posts during the Covid-19 pandemic, including the use of weapons and explosions.

Patrick Ruane, 55, had been found guilty at London's Old Bailey court on two terror charges, after one of his posts from 2021 suggested "whacking" England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty over the head with a spiked bat.

Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty speaks at the daily coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain April 16, 2020Reuters

Other messages by Ruane on two chat groups with thousands of members on the Telegram app wished for the creator of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine to be shot.

At the sentencing hearing, Judge Richard Marks said the messages were "extremely dangerous" at a volatile time, with the risk that people could have acted on them.

"You were, of course, fully entitled to publicly vent your views and to do so in an extremely cogent and forceful way, if you chose," Marks said.

"You, however, went very much further and in so doing committed the offences of which you were convicted."

Whitty, a key adviser to former prime minister Boris Johnson who regularly appeared during the government's televised coronavirus briefings, has been a target for online and other abuse by Covid deniers and conspiracists.

A man was jailed for eight weeks in 2022 after admitting to accosting him in a London park the previous year.