A Fife pensioner who issued death threats to US President Barack Obama has been jailed for two years.
Isabella Jackson of Buckhaven also sent emails and letters to the US Embassy in London claiming there was a bomb on an aeroplane. Further bomb threats were made against the embassy in the capital’s Grosvenor Square, as well as the American Embassy in Paris.
Details of the 68-year-old’s appearance at Dunfermline Sheriff Court on January 23 have just emerged in a police briefing to councillors.
Addressing Fife Council’s Levenmouth area committee, Chief Inspector Graeme Kinmond said the offences related to a series of threatening emails to the American Embassy.
“Mrs Jackson caused a great deal of disruption with her conduct and failed to desist,” he said.
“She caused issues, not in this country but in other countries and I believe on one occasion a plane was grounded in an American airport. It’s a very significant sentence but globally it caused a great deal of trouble and a lot of work for us.”
Jackson admitted three charges of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner between March 16 and December 7 2011.
She admitted that between March 16 and July 1 that year, from her then home in Den Walk, Methil, she behaved in a threatening or abusive manner which was likely to cause fear and alarm.
The charge stated that she sent an email to the American Embassy in London containing threats to cause explosions at the embassy, that there was a bomb on an aeroplane and that the president of the United States was to be killed.
She further admitted that on various dates, between June 24 and July 6 2011, she sent letters by Royal Mail to the US Embassy in London, containing threats to cause explosions there.
Jackson, of Braehead Gardens, East High Street, Buckhaven, pleaded guilty to a third charge stating that between December 5 and 7 2011 she sent emails to the American Embassy in Paris saying there was a bomb on the premises, just off the Champs Elysee.
The offences were committed while the pensioner was on bail granted at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court in 2010. A plea of not guilty to a fourth charge was accepted by the Crown.
Sheriff Craig McSherry, deciding the charges were serious enough to merit a prison sentence, jailed her for 24 months.