A “cyberstalker” who waged a 14-month campaign of harassment against a survivor of the 7/7 bombings has been arrested after an online hunt that was led by bloggers.

Felicity Jane Lowde used her blog to vilify Rachel North, who survived the suicide bombing on a Piccadilly Line Tube train on July 7, 2005.

Ms North’s blog, which appears under the title Rachel from North London, has been at the forefront of the campaign for an independent inquiry into the 7/7 bomb attacks and has acquired a worldwide following.

But Lowde, 41, from Oxford, falsely accused Ms North of lying, of inventing an incident in 2002 when she was the victim of a violent rapist and of exploiting the events of 7/7 for personal gain. In one notorious post, Lowde accused Ms North of “making a living on the backs of the dead”. Lowde also sent e-mails that heaped personal abuse on Ms North.

Officers from the Thames Valley and Metropolitan police forces investigated the case and Lowde was charged under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Her trial was set for April and was to have been a test case for the use of harassment legislation, which was originally designed to deal with stalkers, in a case that involved exclusively online abuse.

Lowde failed to appear for the hearing before magistrates in Stratford, East London, and was convicted in her absence. A warrant was issued for her arrest. She went on the run and continued to attack Ms North on her blog, which she updated from internet cafés.

Lowde accused those trying to apprehend her of engaging in a Sicilian vendetta. Police officers, she said, were “abusive” and Ms North was “a troublemaker in a league of her own”.

Lowde’s antics prompted an angry response. Hundreds of bloggers – some of whom had also been attacked by Lowde – attached virtual “Wanted” posters to their pages, carrying a picture of the offender and the Crimestoppers number.

Police monitored Lowde’s blog postings, and comments that she left on other websites, in an effort to trace the cyber-cafés that she was using.

Lowde was arrested last Thursday afternoon at Café Naz-Express, an internet café in Brick Lane, Whitechapel, East London. She was held overnight in police custody and brought before Thames Magistrates’ Court on Friday, when she was remanded in custody pending presentencing reports. Lowde is due to be sentenced on June 28.

Ms North said last night that she did not want to comment on the case until after the sentencing hearing. She said that she wanted to concentrate on an attempt by the 7/7 survivors’ groups to persuade a new home secretary to grant an independent inquiry into the events of July 2005.

But in a blog posting she said: “I am just thankful this is over, (or almost over, because I am sure Lowde will try to appeal when she is sentenced). But for now, she is in prison til 28 June and so she cannot continue the harassment and threats any more. I feel safe at last, and hopefully the psychiatric reports will be able to tell if she can be treated for an illness and why she has chosen to behave in this way.”

Ms North is not the only person to have complained to police about online harassment by Lowde. Daniel Hart, a web graphics designer from Cowley, Oxford, instructed lawyers to try to have Lowde’s abusive writings about him removed from the internet.

Mr Hart told the Oxford Mail last month that Lowde had turned on him soon after he helped to design her webpage. He said: “Felicity is a case study in madness but her methods are very clear-headed.”

Battle of words

One of Lowde’s malicious postings “[The] campaign in the light of all manner of informed criticism appears to be nothing but an attempt to secure what seems to be an extremely insensitive ‘limelight’ quest . . . in order to promote an otherwise unsuccessful research/ writing career, manoeuvre the press.”

December 20, 2006

From Rachel North’s blog “Since I started posting on the internet, like many bloggers, I’ve been trolled, flamed and had nasty comments . . . I’ve ignored them, let them bounce off, and I do not take action against such people. It’s seen as part of life on the internet. But one person went too far and could not, or would not, stop.”

April 10, 2007

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