A man who threatened to blow up public hospitals in the United Kingdom in an unsuccessful attempt to extort money from them was sentenced in Germany to three years in prison on Friday.
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The 33-year-old man, identified by British investigators as Emil Apreda, has been convicted of attempted extortion by a court in Tiergarten, Berlin.
The court underlined in a press release “
the close cooperation between the German and British authorities
” in this case.
Apreda, an Italian living in Berlin, was arrested last June by German police on suspicion of being responsible for multiple threats of bomb attacks in spring 2020.
In particular, in April 2020 in full containment due to the pandemic in the United Kingdom, he sent an email to the British National Health Service (NHS) in which he threatened to send a parcel bomb to a hospital if he was not paid. not 10 million pounds in bitcoins.
He also threatened British parliamentarians by email, the court said.
In all, investigators identified 18 threatening emails over a six-week period.
"
This is one of the biggest threats to infrastructure in the UK for a long time,
" said Tim Court, director of investigations for the UK unit responsible for combating cybercrime.
According to investigators, Apreda used anti-Semitic language and claimed to be part of Combat 18, a violent right-wing group banned in Germany since last year.
