Friday, May 25, 2007

Internet "pirate" jailed for blowing up toilets

A man in America has been jailed for five years for blowing up a portable toilet.

Fifty-year-old Bruce Forest, of Connecticut, was originally charged with causing a series of explosions in toilets in 2005 and 2006. But as part of a plea bargain, he admitted one explosive toilet offence, in return for which the other charges were dropped.

Forest's defence team, and his wife, insisted that making toilets blow up was utterly out of character for him.

Forest mostly targeted portable toilets in Weston, Connecticut, although he also occasionally diversified into non-portable toilets and toilets not in Weston. The toilet explosions were caused by a mixture of chemicals, detonated with an assault rifle, according to the prosecution.

Forest's defence claimed that he had been suffering psychotic episodes as a result of a drug he was taking to wean him of an addiction to painkillers he took for a migraine.

It had previously been claimed (in the book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation) that, in the 1990s, Forest was one of the largest internet pirates operating. Once again, Forest's wife denies this.

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