Acid attacker Arthur Collins to face judge over smuggled mobile phone

Acid attacker Arthur Collins is due to be sentenced for smuggling a mobile phone into prison so he could privately call his pregnant girlfriend.

Collins, 25, hid the device, two sim cards and two memory sticks inside a crutch while on remand in September, before his trial over the brutal dance floor crime.

In December he was jailed for 20 years for the incident at an east London nightclub, which left 16 people with chemical burns and three people temporarily blinded.

He admitted hiding the phone in the crutch, which he had been using after hurting his feet trying to evade police while on the run, a week later on video link from the maximum security HMP Belmarsh in south east London.

She said: “He had this phone because he and his partner had been hounded by the media.

“He knows there was a phone in the cell but he knows the calls are recorded. Because of that, he was afraid that information would get out to the media.”

Collins hurled a corrosive substance over a crowd on the dance floor at Mangle E8 nightclub in Dalston, east London, in April last year.

But the jury convicted him of five counts of grievous bodily harm with intent and nine counts of actual bodily harm in November.

He will be sentenced for one charge of possession of a prohibited item while in prison at Wood Green Crown Court on Wednesday.