Covid denier who posted violent threats against Chris Whitty was jailed for five years

A Covid denier who suggested ‘hitting’ Prof Sir Chris Whitty with a Rounders bat has been jailed for five years after being convicted of encouraging terrorism.

Posts made by Patrick Ruane on social media were described as ‘extremely dangerous’ at a turbulent time by a judge who sentenced him at the Old Bailey.

The trial previously found that the 55-year-old had targeted individuals including the UK government’s Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Executive Officer of Covid vaccine developer Pfizer in a series of messages in 2021.

Ruane had responded to a post about Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, saying: “The weakest point of the skull (sic) is the back of the skull and all it takes is cycling very fast and hitting the target over the back knock off the skull. head with a rounders bat, but a club (a piece of metal ball and chain) would be much better.

Commenting on the AstraZeneca vaccine maker receiving a standing ovation at Wimbledon, he commented: “It’s a shame there wasn’t a sniper to take that damn POS (piece of shit) out.”

Ruane, an audio producer who worked in films, also posted images of Semtex explosions and called for the implementation of an “IRA playbook” after then Prime Minister Boris Johnson extended lockdown powers for a further period.

Prosecutor Julia Faure Walker said messages from Ruane spanned months and encouraged serious violence and disruption intended to influence the government or intimidate parts of the public.

They reached a “very large audience” through two Telegram chat groups, one of which had 18,000 users.

Judge Richard Marks KC said on Monday that Ruane could not be certain that people would not act on what was said in the messages. He went on to say that Ruane had a “compulsive and obsessive” mentality about the vaccines and that he often posted the messages while “blindly drunk.”

The “overwhelming view around the world” was that vaccines were hugely effective in saving lives, said the judge, who told Ruane he had the right to publicly express dissent. “However, you have gone much further and committed the offenses for which you were convicted,” he said.

Ruane, from Paddington, London, was cleared of gathering information useful to a terrorist. He had denied the charges against him, claiming that his film work gave him a reasonable excuse to have the manual with semtex instructions.

Bethan David, head of counter-terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, said at the time of Ruane’s sentencing last month: “This is a dangerous man who was prolific in encouraging violence because of his firm belief in a conspiracy theory.”