Racist bomber gets six life terms

This time David Copeland (24) had nothing to say. At 3.30 p.m

This time David Copeland (24) had nothing to say. At 3.30 p.m. yesterday when the jury at the Old Bailey returned its guilty verdict, the man who boasted about causing "murder, mayhem, chaos and damage" during a 13-day nail-bomb campaign in London last year, remained silent.

As he was led away from the dock to Broadmoor high security hospital, with the shout from the public gallery that he should "rot in hell" ringing in his ears, there was no emotion.

Copeland, a neo-Nazi, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of three people - Andrea Dykes, John Light and Nik Moore - in April last year when he planted a nail bomb in the Admiral Duncan, a predominantly gay pub in Soho where they were drinking.

Copeland received six life sentences, three for the murders and three for the bombing campaign, during which he planted nail bombs in Soho, Brixton and Brick Lane as part of a racist and homophobic "war".

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The former engineer from a middle class family in Hampshire was tried for murder after the prosecution rejected his plea of guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The jury reached its verdict after six and a half hours' deliberation, prompting Judge Michael Hyam, to tell Copeland: "Nothing can excuse or justify the evil you have done and certainly not the abhorrent views which you have embraced."

Members of London's gay community and some of the 139 victims of the Admiral Duncan bombing attended the trial and clapped and cheered from the public gallery when the verdict was read out.

A picture of Copeland as a clever and calculating homophobe emerged during the four-week trial. As a boy he was sensitive about his small stature and was bullied at school. By his early 20s he had developed a hatred of homosexuals, which he blamed on suggestions by his family that he was gay, and he had built a shrine to Nazism at his home.

After joining the far-right British National Party he obtained information on bomb-making from the Internet and chose Brixton and Brick Lane as his first targets because the areas have large ethnic communities.

Mr Gerard Lynch, a 45-year old Irish man living in London, yesterday described how he had found one of Copeland's bags. Not suspecting it contained a bomb, he had put it in his car for safe-keeping. While he was away from the car, phoning the police, the bomb exploded.