Ex-U.K. Intel Worker Jailed for Trying to Murder NSA Staffer

A former British intelligence employee on Monday was jailed for life for attempting to murder an American NSA staffer in the U.K. earlier this year.

Joshua Bowles, 29, stabbed and punched the woman on March 9 at a sports center in Cheltenham, southwest England, around 3 miles from the headquarters of GCHQ—Britain’s equivalent of the NSA—where the victim was stationed at the time of the attack and where Bowles had once worked as a software developer.

Prosecutors said Bowles researched and conducted surveillance of his victim, referred to in court with the code number “99230” owing to her job in the NSA. At London’s Old Bailey court, Justice Cheema-Grubb ruled that Bowles was motivated by terrorism and that his “politically motivated” attack had been intended to disrupt the work of American and British intelligence.

Read more at The Daily Beast.