A Wandsworth bus passenger has been jailed after a false claim that he was wearing a suicide vest terrified fellow passengers and sparked an armed police response.
Abdul Lasharie, 47, of Testerton Walk in Notting Hill, was sentenced to 26 weeks in prison at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court after being found guilty of a bomb hoax during the bus journey in Wandsworth.
On 15 August, Lasharie communicated information to members of the public which he knew or believed to be false, intending to make them believe a bomb was present on the bus he was travelling on. He had claimed to be wearing a suicide vest while on the bus and had “terrified” passengers. The incident resulted in an armed police response.
Lasharie denied the offence but was found guilty on 17 September. Magistrates said: “The effect on the public [is] difficult to imagine,” adding that Lasharie had “terrified people on the bus”. Magistrates found the offence was so serious that only an immediate custodial sentence could be justified.
Second conviction from the same incident
Lasharie was also convicted of racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress after using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour during the same incident. He had denied that charge but was also found guilty following the case.
He was also ordered to pay £400 in prosecution costs. The court ordered him to pay two separate compensation awards of £200 in connection with the bomb hoax offence.
A bomb hoax is treated seriously precisely because of the response it triggers: armed officers, a bus emptied, passengers frightened — all for a threat that was never real. The 26-week immediate sentence reflects that, with magistrates making clear that the terror felt by people on the bus was the heart of the case. The ruling follows a guilty plea over the Berkeley Square knife attack on a visiting Saudi man and a Croydon man left with life-changing injuries after being kicked in front of a van — a week in which the capital’s courts have dealt with a string of cases where public safety was put at risk.
