A former GCHQ worker described himself as a “terrorist” after launching a “premeditated, targeted and vicious” knife attack on a US spy outside a leisure centre, a court has heard.
Armed with two knives, Joshua Bowles, 29, punched and stabbed the woman repeatedly at the centre some three miles from the UK intelligence agency’s Cheltenham base on March 9.
In August, Bowles, of Welwyn Mews, Cheltenham, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of the woman, referred to by the code number 99230, and assaulting a second person, causing actual bodily harm.
On Friday, he appeared in the dock of the Old Bailey to be sentenced by senior judge Mrs Cheema-Grubb.
Opening the facts, prosecutor Duncan Penny KC said it was a “pre-meditated, targeted and vicious attack on an unarmed woman”.
He told the court: “That woman was a United States government employee working in the United Kingdom.
“She was attacked by a man who was carrying two knives and she was stabbed three times outside, and in the reception area of, a leisure centre in Cheltenham.
“The attack which the perpetrator launched was intended to be lethal – that the helpless victim survived it was mere happenstance.
“Her selection as the target for this attack was entirely and solely associated with her role as a US government employee in the National Security Agency of the United States.”
Mr Penny said Bowles, a former British employee at GCHQ, had described himself as a “terrorist” in the aftermath of the attack.
In a police interview, the defendant told police: “The target was selected for her employment at the NSA.
“Due to the size and resourcing, American intelligence represents the largest contributor within the intelligence community so made sense as the symbolic target. I consider GCHQ just as guilty.”
