Prisoner who sent threats to MP Jess Phillips given extended sentence
A man who threatened to kill Boris Johnson and car-bomb female MPs has had his sentence extended after admitting sending another letter to Jess Phillips.
Rakeem Malik was jailed in June last year after posting the threat to the Prime Minister from his jail cell just days after being charged over what a judge called “repugnant” notes mailed to Theresa May and two other female MPs.
Other correspondence sent by Malik was sent between May and November 2019 and threatened to kill and rape Labour MPs Rosie Cooper and Jess Phillips.
He has been serving a life term since 1999 when he admitted attempting to murder a “cell-mate” whom he tried to strangle with shoelaces at Merseyside’s Ashworth high security hospital.
Malik, a Muslim convert born Paul Anthony Harrison, was held at a secure psychiatric facility in Birmingham between July 2017 and October 2019.
He was arrested in September 2019, admitting writing letters because he was “fed up of hearing about Theresa May," and was returned to prison in October 2019.
But then he sent a letter to the Birmingham Yardley constituency office of Ms Phillips, which contained a reference to jihadis and a death threat to the MP and her family.
Within days of Malik being charged with six of the offences in December 2019, two further letters sent by him were intercepted in the post room at HMP Birmingham.
One contained further threats to Ms Phillips, while another, addressed to Mr Johnson, read: “I’m going to kill you and your girlfriend. I’m going to blow you both up."
He was then charged in August with sending the threatening letter to Ms Philips in November last year, and sending a threatening letter to a member of the public in the same month.
Last year he was given a five-year term with an extended five-year licence, on top of his existing life term. He has now had another five years' licence added to it after the latest letter to Labour MP Ms Phillips.
Birmingham Crown Court also ordered that Malik’s criminal behaviour order should remain in place for an indefinite period to prohibit contact with members of Parliament.
Malik, who is a double amputee and is said to have a psychopathic sub-type of anti-social personality disorder, was also given an indefinite restraining order not to communicate with the victims in this case.
