British Man Put On Trial In Spain Over Stupid (But Obvious) ‘Blow Up A Plane’ Joke

Lots of things look pretty great up front but completely terrible in retrospect. Most of us, however, tend to weather our worst decisions without getting a foreign military force involved.

Unfortunately for UK resident Aditya Verma, something that seemed funny at the moment soon turned into an international incident. Here's how it started, as reported by Laura Gozzi for the BBC.

A British man accused of public disorder after joking about blowing up a flight has gone on trial in Spain.

Aditya Verma made the comment on Snapchat on his way to the island of Menorca with friends in July 2022.

The message, sent before Mr Verma departed Gatwick airport, read: On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)."

Verma made the joke because, as he stated to the court, he's always made that sort of joke. Verma looks like the sort of person ignorant people would assume is a terrorist, i.e. dark-skinned and presumably from a country these same people would consider to be Middle Eastern."

Verma has always joked about his looks with his friends, but this joke was somehow intercepted" by UK authorities despite it being sent via SnapChat. (More on that later.)

The end result? One holy shit" moment after another. Verma's flight was already in the air when UK authorities notified Spanish authorities. This resulted in the Spanish government scrambling military jets to escort the plane to Menora, where the entire plane was searched and Verma was detained for two days by Spanish law enforcement.

Upon his return to his home country, he was then questioned by UK intelligence officers from MI's 5 through 6. (Both of them.)

Not only was Verma, his plane, and his person searched and questioned, his phone was searched extensively as well.

Police experts told the court that they combed Mr Verma's phone and, although they found that he had researched clashes between Pakistan and India and the possibilities of an Islamic State attack in that area, they did not find anything of interest that linked Mr Verma to jihadist radicalism.

If there was any upside at that point, it was that Verma was only facing public disturbance charges (which involved fines and possible compensation for the jet scrambling), rather than terrorist charges, which are generally attached to extremely lengthy prison sentences.

Verma went on trial in Spain for the crime of making a rather obvious, if incredibly questionable, joke. He has now been acquitted, with the court finding the supposed threat" was not credible and no evidence had surfaced indicating Verma ever meant to actually blow up a plane, much less cause distress for his fellow passengers.

The court, however, did take time to comment on the oddity of the so-called interception" of Verma's joke, which was delivered to a private Snapchat group. Snapchat messages aren't end-to-end encrypted (unlike recordings and pictures) which means interception is possible. But nothing explains how this message was obtained by UK authorities and they're certainly not willing to share their interception methods (if any were used) with the general public.

In the judge's resolution, cited by the Europa Press news agency, it was said that the message, for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace".

The message was made in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so 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 judgement added.

At one point the operative theory was that it was somehow detected and intercepted by the provider of the airport's Wi-Fi network. But the airport has since made it clear it does not have that capability.

Given this information, the most likely explanation is that Snapchat itself flagged the message and passed it on to UK law enforcement. What encryption exists only secures the message as it passes to and from Snapchat's servers. Nothing prevents Snapchat from scanning messages for things it might view as suspicious and notifying authorities. While the messages may be ephemeral, they're not invisible. No interception necessary.

Whatever the case, it's good this one wrapped up without costing Verma his future. A dumb joke shouldn't derail someone's life and I'm glad the court was willing to recognize this was just a bad decision, rather than criminal intent.