September 11 hoaxer jailed

A gifted graduate who watched television coverage on the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York then telephoned police and warned of plans to "bombard" Britain as well, was jailed for three years today.

Mossadek Jouini, 38, said he was a member of the banned Palestinian Hamas organisation, insisted it was responsible for the outrages in America, then claimed one of London's tallest tower blocks was to be targeted.

Whether that happened and "innocent people" in the former NatWest Tower at Canary Wharf were killed as a result depended on Tony Blair, he told a telephone operator at Scotland Yard.

The attack would go ahead if the Prime Minister's statements in the coming weeks showed he was backing the United States, Jouini told the operator.

But police traced the 999 call - which came just four-and-a-half hours after thousands were massacred when hijacked passenger jets were flown into New York's Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington - to a public call box on the Strand.

In fact, officers were so prompt that when they arrived Jouini still had the telephone receiver in his hand. When accused of making a hoax call, he denied responsibility, asking the two constables who confronted him: "Have you not got anything better to do?"

Jouini, a Tunisian national, of Holloway Road, north London, admitted one charge of making a hoax telephone call, and a charge of possessing a "bladed article" - a five-inch long knife.