A Spanish court has acquitted a British-Indian man of public disorder after he joked to friends about being a member of the Taliban and planning to blow up a flight from London’s Gatwick to Menorca in Spain in 2022.

Aditya Verma admitted to telling his associates in July 2022: “On my way to blow up the plane. I’m a member of the Taliban.”

He nonetheless stated he had made the joke in a non-public Snapchat group and by no means meant to “cause public distress”, the BBC reported.

A decide in Madrid dominated on Friday that “no explosive… was found that would lead one to believe it was a real threat”.

The decide on the trial, held on the National Court within the Spanish capital, on Monday – a year-and-a-half after the incident happened — dominated that Verma, of Orpington, Kent, ought to be cleared of any wrongdoing.

The message he despatched to associates, earlier than boarding the plane, went on to be picked up by UK safety companies. They then flagged it to Spanish authorities whereas the easyJet plane was nonetheless within the air.

Two Spanish F-18 fighter jets have been despatched to flank the plane. One adopted the plane till it landed at Menorca, the place the plane was searched.

Verma, who was 18 on the time, was arrested and held in a Spanish police cell for 2 days. He was later launched on bail.

If he had been discovered responsible, the college pupil confronted a high quality of up to 22,500 euros and an extra 95,000 euros in bills to cowl the price of the jets being scrambled.

A key query within the case was how the message received out, contemplating Snapchat is an encrypted app.

One idea, raised within the trial, was that it might have been intercepted through Gatwick’s Wi-Fi community. But a spokesperson for the airport instructed BBC News that its community “does not have that capability”.

The decide within the decision stated that the message, “for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace”.

The message was made “in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so the accused could not even remotely assume… that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message,” the judgement added.

It was not instantly clear how UK authorities have been alerted to the message, with the decide noting “they were not the subject of evidence in this trial”.

A spokesperson for Snapchat stated the social media platform wouldn’t “comment on what’s happened in this individual case”.