An internet "troll" who sent a threatening email to a
Conservative MP was banned today from contacting a host of celebrities
- including Lord Sugar.
Frank Zimmerman escaped jail by a whisker when a district judge
suspended a 26-week prison sentence for two years after he sent an
offensive email to Corby MP Louise Mensch.
The bearded 60-year-old, who was taken to court by police on Monday
after being arrested for failing to attend his sentencing last week,
was given the suspended sentence, ordered to pay costs and made
subject of a restraining order.
The order - until further notice - bans the agoraphobic from
contacting a string of well-known people. The list includes Mrs
Mensch, her businessman husband Peter, and Mrs Mensch's ex-husband,
property developer Anthony LoCicero.
Lord Sugar, the Amstrad businessman and star of hit TV Show The
Apprentice, was named on the restraining order, as was Terence
Blacker, a columnist with the Independent newspaper and Zimmerman's
former neighbour in London.
Also listed was General Sir Mike Jackson - once head of the British
Army - and David Petraeus, former US Army commander in Iraq and
Afghanistan and now director of the CIA.
A previous hearing heard how Zimmerman had last year targeted the
outspoken Mrs Mensch, telling her to stop using the social networking
site Twitter or face the consequences. The white-haired defendant, of
Spinney Road, Barnwood, Gloucester, told Mrs Mensch she faced a
"Sophie's Choice" - a reference to a novel in which heroine
Sophie has to choose between the life of her son or daughter at a Nazi
concentration camp.
The Northamptonshire MP, 40, who has a Twitter following of 50,000,
immediately called in the police and arranged security for her family.
Unbowed, she went on to tweet to followers: "Had some morons
threaten my children by email. To those who sent it; get stuffed
losers."
The offensive email was later traced to the IP address of Zimmerman's
home computer. He was charged with an offence of sending by public
communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene, menacing
message or matter.
The case against Zimmerman, of Spinney Road, Barnwood, Gloucester, had
been proven in his absence after he failed to attend court - blaming
his agoraphobia and depression. He was supposed to have been sentenced
at Cheltenham Magistrates' Court last week but failed to attend.
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