OAP faces jail for post explaining how to blow up London

A Scots pensioner who posted instructions online on how to blow up the centre of London using the city’s gas mains is facing a jail sentence.

James Kessler, 67, posted a disturbing message on his Facebook page with detailed instructions on how to create an explosion in the centre of the English capital.

Kessler’s online message gave instructions on how to use a city’s gas mains to launch a terror attack and included the words “here’s how to blow up downtown London – nice and easy”. The Facebook post was spotted by a gas industry expert who said the terror instructions were “completely feasible” and if carried out could “lead to the death of thousands of people”.

Police were immediately alerted. When the OAP was being questioned, he claimed thedisturbingmessageshould have been considered as “satire” and was just “humour” on his part.

Kessler, from Dunfermline in Fife, appeared in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday where he pleaded guilty to creating a post on social media that described how to create an explosion in London and other cities.

Prosecutor Alan Morrison told the court an employee of Air Liquide UK, who supply bulk gases and liquid oxygen to industry, spotted Kessler’s menacing online public post in September 2017.

The fiscal said the employee, only referred to as Mr Hopper, read the post. The Facebook message also included a link to the Air Liquide UK website and described “how an attack carried out in central London, or any major city, would have a mains gas system”. The post described using a tanker used by the gas company and included instructions as to how “an attack could be coordinated across the central gas main system”.

Mr Morrison said Kessler had written “in exact detail” how to mix the liquid oxygen that would be needed for such an attack to be carried out.

He said the online message also contained the words “big bang” and “take out the centre of the beast in one flash”.

The witness Mr Hopper, who has worked in the gas industry for 40 years, was said to have been left “alarmed” after reading the message Police Scotland officers were made aware of the Facebook post and, after accessing the message, Kessler was arrested in December 2017. Sheriff Alistair Noble deferred sentence to next month.