Pro-Brexit war veteran jailed for menacing MP
Heidi Allen sent terrifying rope and scaffold threat
A PRO-BREXIT war veteran was yesterday jailed for menacing a Remainer MP online, including posting aerial images of her home on social media.
Ian Couch also said he should order some rope in ‘a clear reference to hanging’, a court heard.
He told the former Tory MP in email: ‘I do only live 500m away from you … hope the renovations are going well and the scaffolding on the front seems apt. LOL... democracy pathetic.’
Prosecutor Michael Proctor said that the comments about the scaffolding were a reference to hanging ‘traitors’. In another post Couch joked that he should ‘add some rope to my yellow vest order’.
A district judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court said Couch’s posts on social media and emails would have been terrifying and were ‘clearly threatening’. The Falklands veteran, 59, threatened to send details of the South Cambridgeshire MP’s home and aerial photos of it to email addresses that she had previously blocked.
Mr Proctor told the court the former Ukip candidate became obsessed with Miss Allen after they met briefly. Eventually she had to block him on social media ‘because he was tweeting constantly about Brexit’. In November 2018 he went to her home and thrust his war medals into her hand as she answered the door in her dressing gown. In a post after the incident Crouch said Miss Allen, now acting leader of Change UK, was ‘looking good’.
Couch, of Elsworth, Cambridgeshire, admitted sending offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing messages. He also admitted not turning up to a previous hearing. He was handed 24-weeks in jail for the messages and fined £120 for missing the hearing.
He was also banned from contacting Miss Allen or sending any information relating to her ‘personal or private life’.
In a further case, a retired
‘I truly hope you will die’
policeman avoided jail after putting a pro-Europe Tory MP in fear for her life. Ukip supporter John Timbrell, 77, sent three ‘vile and abusive’ emails to Antoinette Sandbach, 50, Tory MP for Eddisbury in Cheshire and a mother of two.
Timbrell, of Drybrook, Gloucestershire, denied subjecting her to harassment, alarm or distress but was convicted and handed 18 weeks jail suspended for 18 months and banned from making any contact with the MP.
In his first email in June 2018, sent after Miss Sandbach backed rebel amendments in the Commons over Brexit, he said: ‘The penalty for treason is still death. I truly hope that you will die.’
A later email was written in red and again referred to the death penalty for treason.