06 June,2011 07:47 AM IST | | Agencies
Virgin Atlantic has sacked four airport workers for e-mailing a video said to show a Taliban Âfighter having sex with a donkey.
They lost their jobs atu00a0 Gatwick for circulating the footage, which is believed to have been filmed by US special forces inu00a0 Afghanistan.
The clip has become an internet hit and carries the caption: "What the Taliban do when they are not making improvised explosive devices."
Bosses were alerted when David Armstrong, who works as a turnaround co-ordinator, accidentally sent it to everyone in the company's IT department.
Armstrong and three others were sacked last April for gross misconduct and warned they may have been in breach of the Obscene Publications Act.
But they are claiming they were unfairly dismissed because they say more senior Virgin staff regularly sent pornography to the airline's staff.
A Gatwick source said, "To sack these people was way over the top." A Virgin Atlantic spokeswoman said: "The claimants were dismissed for serious breaches of company IT policy."
A panel chairman is due to view the alleged donkey sex film at an employment tribunal which starts today.
