BBC News
By Tom Symonds
image captionThe hoaxer's targets included UK hospitals during the first lockdown
An Italian man in Germany has been sentenced to three years in prison for threatening to bomb NHS hospitals, Black Lives Matter rallies and UK MPs.
Emil Apreda, 33, sent emails from Berlin demanding £10m worth of Bitcoin to not carry out the attacks.
The National Crime Agency said he made his threats in the spring and summer of 2020 as the NHS struggled with Covid.
Senior officers kept the threats from the public for fear of patients being scared into not attending hospitals.
Apreda used encryption techniques and the dark web in an attempt to hide his identity, but police brought in behavioural, linguistics and cyber-crime experts to track him down.