Poker Player Damon Smith Jailed For 15 years Over Underground Bomb Plot

(Photo: BBC.co.uk)

The 20-year old poker-playing student who was convicted last month of a bomb plot on the London Underground has been jailed today for 15 years at the Old Bailey in London.

Damon Smith, who claims to have autism, smiled in the dock as the judge, Richard Marks QC, sentenced him to 15 years in a young offender institution, with an extended period of five years on licence. Judge Marks said that although Smith had an interest in Islam, he was not motivated by terrorism.

Smith was captured on CCTV leaving an explosives and ball-bearing filled rucksack on the London Underground Jubilee Line on October 20 last year, having built the bomb at home with a £2 clock from Tesco, after googling an al-Qaeda article entitled ‘Make A Bomb In The Kitchen Of Your Mom’.

Today his mother, Antonitza Smith, 47, claimed that her son needed help and not a prison sentence, stating:

"He is a vulnerable little boy. He needs help not prison. People think he is a killer but he wouldn't even hurt a fly. He is a lovely boy.”

She said that the ‘poker-playing loner’, “ did not realize the consequences or the seriousness of the offence he had done."

When Smith was tasered and arrested by police late last year, neighbors were in disbelief that the “gentlest-natured person” was responsible for the bombing attempt, which experts stated was viable would have caused considerable injury and damage had it exploded.

"He is really smart, really smart. I know he played poker and stuff, he's really good at it,” stated one neighbor, while another, Ray Wilkinson, told reporters at the time: “He used to play poker… he was a real poker fan and he used to join clubs and things like that. He didn't speak too much."

 Smith’s Twitter account showed photos of him posing with wads of cash at his local Grosvenor Casino, but his interests went beyond games – despite claiming at his trial that he “only meant [the bomb] to spew harmless smoke” as a Halloween joke.

(Photo: Twitter.com)

According to police, a search of Smith's home in Rotherhithe, South London, revealed “a fixation with guns, explosives and other weapons,” and they also recovered pictures of Smith with guns, including one on a laptop labelled '2016 an Islamic State fighter'. He denied being an extremist despite also ‘posing next to an image of the Brussels-born Islamic terrorist alleged to have masterminded the attacks in Paris in November 2015’.

At Smith’s sentencing today, Judge Marks said:

“Quite what your motives were and what your true thinking was in acting as you did is difficult to discern with any degree of clarity or certainty. Whatever the position, the seriousness of what you did can not be overstated, not least against the background of the fear in which we all live from the use of bombs here and around the world, an all too timely reminder of which were the events in Manchester earlier this week.”