Joshua Bowles: GCHQ employee admits trying to homicide American colleague in Cheltenham knife assault

A GCHQ employee has admitted attempting to homicide an American colleague as a result of she labored on the spy company.

Joshua Bowles, 29, punched and stabbed the lady, a US authorities worker, at a leisure centre some three miles from the UK intelligence company’s Cheltenham base on the night of 9 March.

Bowles, of Welwyn Mews, Cheltenham, appeared on the Old Bailey on Wednesday, the place he pleaded responsible to tried homicide and assault occasioning precise bodily hurt after punching a person, Alex Fuentes, who confronted the attacker within the automotive park.

Bowles was charged following an investigation by counter-terror police and prosecutors stated there was a terrorist connection as a result of he focused the lady, referred to in fees solely by the code quantity “99230”, over her work.

An earlier listening to was informed he was armed with two knives when he launched the assault at about 9.15pm as she left the leisure centre, in Tommy Taylors Lane, with a buddy.

The sufferer suffered a number of stab accidents, together with a wound to her stomach that pierced her liver, and was taken to hospital, the place she wanted emergency surgical procedure and frolicked within the intensive care unit.

Following the listening to on Wednesday, Nick Price, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, stated: “This extremely violent attack against two innocent people was completely unprovoked.

“It is correct that those that commit violent crimes like this needs to be prosecuted to the total extent of the regulation to guard the general public, and our ideas proceed to be with the victims and their households.”

The decide, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, remanded Bowles in custody forward of sentencing earlier than the tip of October.