A former military man who threatened to blow up a mosque has been jailed after fleeing Scotland for London in breach of court orders.
Neil MacGregor (37), of Scrimgeours Court, Crieff, launched a hate campaign against Scottish muslims, pledging to wreak havoc on them if all the mosques in the country were not shut.
He was sentenced to three years’ probation at Glasgow Sheriff Court in 2009 after sending an email to police stating he would kill a muslim each day and blow up the city’s Central Mosque if his demands were not met.
But the self-confessed racist and National Front member appeared in handcuffs in the dock at Perth Sheriff Court on Wednesday to admit breaching the order.
His appearance was interrupted as he had an apparent panic attack during proceedings and had to be led back to the cells to compose himself.
The court was told MacGregor had moved to London and refused to tell the authorities where he was staying.
Sheriff Lindsay Foulis noted he had complied with probation terms for only one year, and jailed him for a year.
The court heard how MacGregor sent an email to the generic Strathclyde Police address on February 2, 2007.
Depute fiscal John Malpass said it made numerous threats against muslims and demanded the closure of all mosques in Scotland. It said a Semtex bomb full of nails would be placed at Glasgow Central Mosque, prompting anti-terrorism officers to become involved.
No bomb was found and the IP address from which the email was sent was traced back to MacGregor’s Glasgow flat.
Before police could trace him, MacGregor made a 999 call three days later from a public phone box.
Mr Malpass said “he claimed to be a member of the National Front and stated there was going to be a bomb at the Central Mosque some point later in the week.”
MacGregor’s fingerprints were found in the phone box and investigations showed he had made similar calls in recent weeks.
MacGregor’s solicitor, Craig Dewar, said his client had acted after viewing an internet clip of a beheading in Iraq and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after his military career.
At the time of his original sentence, Osama Saeed of the Scottish-Islamic Foundation questioned its apparent leniency.
He said, “We believe that if a young Muslim had similarly been radicalised into threatening violence after viewing videos from Iraq, he would have been dealt with completely differently by the police and prosecuting authorities.”