A man has pleaded guilty to sending the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch emails threatening to shoot her dead.
Kieran Kyle of Gillingham, Kent, sent three emails on 2nd May to the Tory party leader in which he made racist references and claimed to have been in the IRA, a court has heard.
On Tuesday, 22nd September, the 43-year-old pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to two counts of sending communications of an indecent or offensive nature.
The messages came on the same day Badenoch apologised for footage of Bloody Sunday being used in a social media clip to criticise a bill on historical issues in Northern Ireland.
Thirteen unarmed civilians were shot dead when members of the Army’s parachute regiment opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in the Bogside area of Londonderry on 30 January 1972, which became known as Bloody Sunday.
Jennifer Dannhauser, prosecuting, said Kyle had written “I’m ex-IRA, so Bloody Sunday references from you are going to give you trouble.” He said he would have shot Badenoch when he was a paramilitary, the court was told.
It heard Kieran Kyle, a former Media Studies teacher at Knole Academy in Sevenoaks, had emailed Badenoch’s husband Hamish on 29nd April and used a racist term.
In the message, he said she had a “big mouth” and he should “put a leash on her”.
The defendant wrote again days later, the court was told, using a racist term and saying “misusing Bloody Sunday is a new low, pray she never ends up in Belfast cos she’ll be left face down in a ditch with a bullet in her head”.
Mr Kyle, who the court heard is of previous good character, is due to be sentenced on 29th October, with Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring informing him a custodial sentence was a real possibility.
