An obsessive loner who hatched a plot to bomb a restaurant at Gatwick was today jailed for ten years.

Chef Jose Pestana, 41, planned to use crude home-made explosives during a revenge attack on his former employers at Garfunkels.

He sparked a major security alert when the devices, made from firework powder wrapped in newspaper and taped to gas canisters, were found by police during a search of his flat in Crawley, two miles from the airport, in March.

Pestana became obsessed after he was forced to quit his job at the restaurant following an accident at work.

He injured his finger in 1995 after slipping on a wet floor while carrying a stack of plates and received £22,500, but told his friends he should have got £1million.

Over the following years his feelings of resentment developed into a grudge against the restaurant and he talked constantly to his two Portuguese flatmates about bombing the eatery and killing the manager.

Sentencing him at Hove Crown Court, Judge David Rennie told Pestana he was sure he had intended to carry out his plan.

He said: "You began to brood and fester. As time went by these feelings completely overwhelmed you and they became darker and darker and all you could think and talk about to anyone who would listen was Garfunkels, its management and what they had done to your life."

The judge said explosives experts during the five-day trial last month had concluded the crude home-made devices would have caused a danger to life if detonated.

He said: "Although this is not a terrorism case I am mindful of the potentially catastrophic effects of the detonation of explosive devices in a public place.

"Television coverage of recent events in countries such as Israel, Bali and Iraq show in dramatic and shocking ways the most extreme examples of what happens to innocent men, women and children.

"The actions of obsessive loners like you, that have harboured a grudge for years, strikes at the heart of society."

The judge said he would recommend Pestana was deported once he was released from jail.

Pestana, a Portuguese national from the island of Madeira, was convicted of possessing explosives with intent to endanger life by a jury at Lewes Crown Court.

The court heard his plot was uncovered by chance when the defendant was arrested on suspicion of illegally using electricity and the three-bedroom maisonette he shared in Langley Parade, Langley Green, was searched.

The home-made bombs were found hidden in a secret compartment in a sofa.

People living and working nearby were evacuated and an Army bomb disposal unit was called in.

Pestana, who arrived in this country 13 years ago, told the jury he had had no intention of harming anyone and had made the devices to use as fireworks to celebrate Christmas and New Year.

Before he was sentenced, James Mason, defending, told how his client's resentment had become an obsession.

He said: "This was a simple man from a simple background driven in the tortures and agony of his own anguished mind and soul over many years, getting into a dark void and there he stayed, brewing up.

"In many ways he is a very sad figure."