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CHANNEL TUNNEL BOMB MAN LET OFF PRISON

The man who tried to take an unstable mortar through the Channel Tunnel in January has been spared a prison sentence.

The amateur historian Stephen Hart, from  Frant in East Sussex tried to return the World War I mortar bomb through the Channel Tunnel  after he found it on a battlefield on the Somme.

Hart, 54, admitted possessing explosives at an earlier hearing at Maidstone Crown Court and  was given a nine month suspended prison term and fined £2,000 by the court o­n Friday.

The Channel Tunnel was closed for five hours and the terminal in Folkestone, was evacuated after it was found in Hart's car.

The device was considered to be so unstable that it had to be detonated by an Army bomb disposal team in a controlled explosion at the tunnel terminal.