Man who threatened to blow up Southampton General Hospital is jailed

It was the second time in a year that Saeed Ghafoor, 34, had been jailed at the Old Bailey for threatening a terrorist atrocity.

Last June, he was jailed for a year for telling police he would blow up the giant Bluewater shopping centre in Kent - although he thought it was in Exeter.

Today he pleaded guilty to threatening to damage property by blowing up Southampton General Hospital.

The sentence will run when the other term runs out in June, amid fears that Ghafoor of Eastleigh, wanted to stay in jail.

He made both threats while in prison - the first time for attacking his sister when his marriage failed.

Judge Mr Justice Calvert-Smith said the prison psychiatrist and the probation service could not recommend any other way of dealing with him.

But he said he hoped some ''imaginative thinking'' would be used in the prison system to stop Ghafoor "the currently insolvable problem" and stop him making more threats.

He said: "It is not doing him much good and is costing the taxpayer money. It is not a suitable environment for him."

Piers Arnold, prosecuting, told the court that Ghafoor was being held in the healthcare unit of Belmarsh prison in October last year.

He had been due to be released on December 16 last year, after serving half of his sentence.

He told police: "I support al Qaida. An atrocity is justified."

Mr Arnold said Ghafoor said he was not thinking of a suicide mission but could not say how he would detonate gas canisters he said he would use in the vehicle.

The threat was taken seriously, particularly as Ghafoor was a local man who knew the hospital.

Roy Brown, defending, said Ghafoor said he had told police as a "warning".

Unsuccessfully asking for a fuller psychiatric assessment, Mr Brown added: "He is a fantasist but not all fantasists are harmless.

"What is striking is that he was positively enthusiastic in wanting to enter a guilty plea."