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A vengeful former British cyber espionage employee who saw himself as an ‘incel’ was jailed after trying to kill a female US spy in the car park of a Cheltenham leisure centre with a pair of knives.

The GCHQ worker has been handed his sentence after attempting to stab the poor woman in a “premeditated, targeted and vicious” knife attack.

Joshua Bowles, 29, launched the attack on the intelligence agent, named only as code number 99230, on March 9 after becoming disillusioned with the work of his former employer – and having been rejected by another American woman before.

Footage outside the gym shows Bowles running after the woman and another US national before he begins the attack:

Per DailyMail, prosecutors suggested that the attack had been terror-motivated. Meanwhile, lawyers acting for Bowles suggested that the attack was spurned on by another former American co-worker who made him into an ‘incel’, or an ‘involuntary celibate’ by rejecting his advances.

He had carried out the attack at the leisure centre, which was close to the UK intelligence, security and cyber- agency’s Cheltenham base where he used to work after researching the woman and carrying out surveillance of her, per The Guardian:

The judge at the Old Bailey, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, ruled Bowles had been driven by terrorism, describing his crime as a “politically motivated attack” designed to disrupt British and US intelligence work.

The judge highlighted that Bowles was familiar with “incel” – involuntary celibate – culture and in the days and weeks leading up to the attack had researched serial killers, the “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski, white supremacy and attacks on women.

Working as a software coding developer at GCHQ until late in 2022, he researched his victim’s personal life and discovered she played netball at the leisure centre. He had waited in the car park to launch his attack but fortunately, a passerby, Alex Fuentes, stepped in to save the woman and was punched. If he had not interfered, however, the woman could have died.

Image: Gloucestershire Police

The judge said that he would serve at least 13 years in prison before being considered for parole, but if he had succeeded in killing his target, he would have been given a full life term.

She said: “Your feelings of anger and resentment against GCHQ and women evolved sufficiently to lead you to mount an assault through which you intended, however unrealistically, to disrupt the work of the UK intelligence community with an important ally, the USA, and you hoped to achieve this by killing one of the American citizens you knew was engaged in that work.”

Bowles pretty much admitted as much in a police interview, saying; “The target was selected for her employment at the NSA. American intelligence represents the largest contributor within the intelligence community so it made sense as the symbolic target. I consider GCHQ just as guilty.”

After the attack, Bowles told a member of the public he could no longer “handle the murky waters of ethics and whether they are doing the right thing and the power that the American NSA have”. He added: “It’s a good job I didn’t have a gun, isn’t it?” and also said: “I make a pretty shit terrorist, don’t I?”

The audacity of this man talking about ethics is laughable. What a tw*t.

[source:dailymail&guardian]