as if tax season wasn’t bad enough for accountants
in great britain, an osama bin laden follower has pleaded guilty and been jailed for (it says here) “recklessly encouraging terrorist attacks” against accountants.
malcolm hodges, a british subject who is engaged to an american, was given a two-year jail sentence last month for sending dozens of letters to mosques around the u.k. urging muslims to launch terror attacks on accountants.
ironically, the 44-year-old was a wannabe accountant himself. after failing his accreditation exam, he held a “festering grudge†for more than a decade against professional accountancy.
hodges felt that his fellow terrorist brethren needed some guidance on target selection. the key to an al qaeda victory, he wrote in letters to mosques, was to target accountants.
in hodges’ master plan, “jihad†must be declared against accountants connected with “the corrupt and western society, which are abhorrent to true believers, which the infidels, in their arrogance, will not expect to be attacked.â€
accountants may not be amused to hear they were singled out for targeting, but in somewhat of a backward compliment, hodges believed accountants were the heart of the west. he wrote that attacking them would mean “striking at the infidels where it hurts most.â€
the acca certainly considered hodges to be a real risk. the court also heard how the association took the threats so seriously it spent £140,000 on security measures.
“we were warned by the police of the letter campaign in 2006,†an icaew spokesperson told accountingweb. “since then the institute has reviewed its security measures as appropriate. you have to take these things seriously, there’s no way of knowing if it’s a hoax or not.â€
judge roberts said that hodges suffered from a “seriously abnormal mental conditionâ€, probably in “some form of personality disorderâ€.
hodges had been supposed to marry last may, but his fiancee broke off the engagement on news of his arrest. more here, here and here.