A man who tried to frame his landlady’s partner for a 2017 terrorist attack outside the UK Parliament has been sentenced to prison.
Gerald Banyard sent two anonymous letters to police suggesting a second man had incited Khalid Masood to launch a killing spree.
But the alleged second man, Ian Anderson-Boles, had nothing to do with the attack and was implicated because of a dispute over a faulty boiler in a flat that Banyard rented from Mr Anderson-Boles's partner.
Banyard took his opportunity for revenge after Masood carried a terrorist attack in England in 2017. Using a hired car, Masood ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in central London, killing four.
He then ran on to parliamentary grounds and stabbed a policeman to death. Masood's rampage ended when he was shot dead by armed officers.
Banyard, 67, from Whalley, Lancashire, sent a package to police eight days after the attack claiming to be an American tourist who had found a suspicious note in his hotel room.
The note, which was signed "Ian" and included Mr Anderson-Boles’s mobile phone number, urged Masood to “stick a cop”. A second note further sought to implicate the man and his partner.
Banyard denied sending the notes but was found guilty of perverting the course of justice after several hundred police hours were wasted on inquiries.
At a court in London on Thursday, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced him to more than three years in prison.
"You are a truly devious and manipulative man," he said. “Your conduct involved baseless allegations of complicity in an act of mass murder, which is what the Westminster attack was.
"I am quite sure you were out to ruin his life completely if you possibly could. It was not for want of trying that you did not succeed in that."
