Preetam Prakash Maid (33) was sentenced to three years’ behind bars after the incident, which occurred just days after the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019.
That sentence, however, was cut to 17 months’ imprisonment by the Court of Appeal which ruled the original penalty was “manifestly excessive”.
The court rejected his appeal against conviction, saying there was “strong circumstantial evidence” of his guilt.
Maid took his protest to the highest jurisdiction in the land – the Supreme Court – but was shut down short of a hearing.
The court, in a judgement released today, said there was no risk of a miscarriage of justice and declined him leave to appeal.
Maid, the court heard at trial, had been vocal with superiors about what he perceived to be inadequate security in some areas of the airport and the Crown case was that the fake bomb was his way of exposing them.
He took items from the storeroom — a SodaStream gas canister, a decommissioned cellphone, and red and black wiring — and stashed them in a laptop bag knowing it would resemble a bomb.
While conducting a perimeter check of the airport, he slipped the bag into the alcove of a hut at the north end of the runway before calling it in.
The item was “neutralised” by the New Zealand Defence Force.
The most critical piece of evidence came from a cryptic handwritten note wrapped around the bag’s handle.
‘‘A: Alpha, B: Birds, C: Crash, D: Dunedin, E: Emergency, F: Fools,’’ it said.
A forensic document examiner told the jury she was confident the defendant was the author.
It is understood Maid was released from prison towards the end of last year.
