Michael Shrimpton facing jail for communicating false information, as previous conviction for possession of indecent images of children is revealed
This afternoon at Southwark Crown Court a jury has found ex-Tanfield Chambers barrister and immigration judge Michael Shrimpton guilty of making a bomb hoax before the 2012 Olympics.
The nine men and three women took more than six hours to come to their majority 11-1 verdict.
Shrimpton, who still holds a valid practising certificate, is now facing jail as he awaits sentencing on 6 February. In the meantime he has been granted bail and will undergo a psychiatric examination.
In the wake of the decision, it can be reported that Shrimpton holds a previous conviction for possession of indecent images of children. An attempt by the barrister to appeal the conviction — which came about after police found the images on a memory stick in his house during a search — failed last month. During the case at Aylesbury Crown Court, Shrimpton claimed that secret service agents planted the images on his computer memory stick in a plot to discredit him.
He was sentenced earlier this year to a three year supervision order and a five year Sexual Offences Prevention Order for the crime.
In brief, the bizarre facts of the bomb hoax case were that Shrimpton called up the Ministry of Defence before the 2012 Olympics to announce that a nuclear weapon had been stolen from sunken Russian submarine the Kursk, smuggled into the UK by a group affiliated with World War Two Nazis and was being stored in preparation for an attack on the Queen at the Olympics.
At Southwark Crown Court today, Judge Alistair McCreath QC said:
“The sentence that I pass upon you will have to reflect that gravity of the conduct of which you have been convicted.
“But if, as may be the case, there is some underlying reason for it, then it seems to me important that I be informed of that underlying reason and I am therefore minded to order that you undergo psychiatric examination.”
Legal Cheek has previously brought to a wider audience Shrimpton’s assertion that missing Malaysian flight MH370 was shot down by a Chinese missile and his claim that Madeleine McCann was “murdered on the orders of German Intelligence”.