An airline passenger who made a joke about bombing the flight he was on, leading fighter jets to be scrambled, has been cleared and won’t have to pay a $120,000 bill, the BBC reported.
Aditya Verma was 18 in 2022 when he traveled from London to Spain for a vacation with his friends. The court heard that before boarding the easyJet airliner, he sent a Snapchat message: “On my way to blow up the plane (I’m a member of the Taliban).”
British security services flagged the message to Spanish authorities, who sent two F-18 jets to follow the plane until it landed. The plane was searched, but no evidence of any explosives was found.
Verma, now a college student studying economics, spent two days in jail before being released on bail. His trial started on January 22 for one charge of public disorder.
If he were found guilty, the Spanish Defense Ministry wanted about $103,000 for the cost of scrambling the fighter jets, and he faced a fine of about $17,000.
But the judge cleared Verma on Thursday, saying the joke was made “in a strictly private environment,” per the BBC.
“The accused could not even remotely assume … that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message,” the judge added.
One question left unanswered in the case was how the security services saw Verma’s Snapchat message.