'Jihad on accountants' man jailed

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A man has been jailed for two years for sending dozens of letters to mosques around the UK urging their members to launch terror attacks on accountants.

Malcolm Hodges, 44, from Sittingbourne, Kent, bore a "festering grudge" against professional accountancy bodies more than a decade after he failed an exam.

The Old Bailey heard he claimed in the letters, sent in November 2006, he was a follower of Osama bin Laden.

He pleaded guilty on Tuesday to recklessly encouraging terrorism.

The court was told he wrote in the letters: "Brothers, you are right to kill the infidels but you are making a mistake to try to attack planes and other targets."

He said Muslims should instead focus their "jihad" on four accountancy bodies.

"Brothers, striking at these targets will be striking at the infidels where it hurts most," he said.

'Real risk'

Paul Taylor, prosecuting, said Hodges had never accepted that he failed an exam set by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in 1998 and had been in dispute with the organisation ever since.

The court heard the ACCA took the threats seriously and spent more than £140,000 on security measures.

David Burgess, defending, said Hodges had nursed his obsession for years and sent letters to the royal family, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor seeking redress for the "grave injustice" done to him.

He was due to be married in May last year but his fiancée returned home to the United States after his arrest.

Judge Jeremy Roberts told Hodges: "There was a real risk that if one of your letters had fallen into the wrong hands there might have been a terrorist atrocity and people might have been killed or seriously injured."

But he accepted Hodges, from London Road, Teynham, suffered from a "seriously abnormal mental condition" likely to be "some form of personality disorder".