Two Daily Mirror nimrods journalists were arrested yesterday after attempting to plant a fake bomb on a train in what the newspaper called a "legitimate and justified journalistic experience".
The reporters were arrested at Stonebridge Park depot in north-west London after railway staff noticed the men carrying fake equipment and approached them to ask what they were doing on the site before contacting the British Transport police to report the trespass. A police spokesman said the men were arrested at the depot yesterday afternoon and taken to a police station nearby. The matter was still being investigated and no charges had yet been laid, police said.
| Have they at least earned an anti-social behaviour order? |
The Mirror defended its reporters yesterday. It said they were carrying out the investigation to test security and were following up on a similar story last year when its reporter Tom Parry planted a fake bomb on a train bound for Sellafield.
| See? It didn't work. You have your story, and the police have two of your reporters. Such a deal! |
"Last year Mirror journalists attempted and succeeded in planting a fake bomb on a nuclear train, which highlighted serious security lapses," a spokesperson for the paper said. "We felt that it was a legitimate and justified journalistic exercise to repeat the action in the interests of public safety. We are happy to see that the security procedures have now improved."
| Now, won't the nice constables release our civic-minded employees? |
Mr Parry is understood to be one of the two men held yesterday.
Following the arrests a spokeswoman from the Ministry of Defence said that security was a top priority.
In January a Mirror journalist also placed a fake bomb on an unguarded train at Didcot Parkway station in Oxfordshire, an exercise which prompted a review of security on MoD trains.
| How about an anti-social behaviour order for that reporter? |
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