I should not have posted photos of dead Grenfell victim on Facebook, jailed man admits

A man who posted pictures of the body a victim of the Grenfell fire on Facebook has said he was "traumatised" at the time and regrets his actions. 

Omega Mwaikambo, 43, was jailed for three months for sharing the images and expressed his shock at receiving such a long sentence.

He posted pictures on the social media site of the body of a person believed to have leapt to his death from the blazing tower block.  

He told BBC Newsnight he knew it was "morally wrong" to take pictures of the loosely covered corpse hours after the blaze struck the block of flats in Kensington in June.

He said he had been "traumatised" and "mesmerised" at the time.

"God knows what I was thinking in my head, but I was holding my iPad. The body was not wrapped tightly, it was loosely wrapped. Inside I was just saying to myself, 'Does anybody know this person?'."

He added: "I feel so bad. I regret it." 

"I can understand why they are angry. Why would anybody take a photo of a dead person?" 

He told the programme he had been "traumatised" by what he had seen, describing the blaze near his home as being like 9/11 but "real in front of my eyes".

He said: "I took the picture, I didn't do anything wrong, just a picture. I didn't steal, I didn't kill. I didn't commit any crime that I know is ... high risk."

He added: "I couldn't believe it (the sentence) was that long. Not that I was expecting a short time but that length of period of time to be in prison really shocked me."

At least 80 people were killed in the disaster in West London, currently the subject of a public inquiry led by Sir Martin Moore-Bick.

Mwaikambo, of Testerton Walk, close to the base of the Grenfell Tower, pleaded guilty to two offences contrary to section 127 of the Communications Act at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

He posted one video and two pictures of the body bag with the man inside and then later five pictures of the victim's face and body after opening it to look inside.

He had watched the fire engulf the building during the night and had made cups of tea for firefighters, but he later took the photos and uploaded them online. 

He was sentenced to six weeks for each offence, to be served consecutively.

Prosecutor Tom Little told a court earlier this year that  the offences were high culpability because "even the fact of the death would not have been known to the family" of the victim at that early stage.

His defence said he had felt shocked that the body had been left unattended. 

Mwaikambo told Newsnight he used his iPad to take pictures when he came across the body close to his home.

He said he accepted people would be angry at what he did at 5am on June 14, and he felt "so bad".

But he added: "I was in and out of my senses but I was really struggling to compose myself.

"That body was not meant to be there in the first place, regardless of what ... I could understand that there was something massive happening outside, but it should not be kept in that place, in a patch of dirty water. That really messed my head up."