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Racist ‘mad scientist’ tried to lure underage girls for ‘sexperiment’ on Bridlington sea front

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December 2, 2022
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Far-right extremist Simon Sheppard had previously denied the Holocaust happened



A notorious far-right extremist who made sick jokes about Jews being exterminated during the “Holohoax” set himself up as an eccentric “mad scientist” in a cynical bid to entice girls into having sex for a so-called “sexperiment”.

Simon Sheppard pretended to be a psychologist when he approached girls in Bridlington and gave them a card inviting them to take part in the bizarre bogus sexual experiment. The 65-year-old, who has strong links to Hull, has now been jailed for three years and nine months.

Sheppard, of Promenade, Bridlington, had been convicted by a jury on February 18 after a trial at Hull Crown Court of eight offences involving attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and inciting the sexual exploitation of children in Bridlington.

Recorder Tahir Khan KC told a sentencing hearing at Bradford Crown Court that a 21-year-old woman went with a friend to Bridlington on July 17 last year. Sheppard approached them, made conversation and asked them how they were and if they wanted to go on an adventure.

“You were claiming to be a scientist who had degrees and was conducting an experiment,” said Recorder Khan. “You were saying you were accredited.”

They declined the offer of going for a walk and having a drink. “He was holding himself out to be a psychologist,” added Recorder Khan.

Three weeks later, on August 12 last year, two 15-year-old twin girls were at Bridlington pier when Sheppard approached them and handed them a card and encouraged them to go with him. “The girls were confused and thought that the invitation that you were extending was creepy and they began to leave,” said Recorder Khan. “You got up and started to follow them. They ran and later told their mother what had happened.”

On August 21 last year, two girls were at the fairground at Bridlington pier when Sheppard – “wearing a suit” – handed one of them a card, which she took. “You disappeared quickly from the direction you had come,” said Recorder Khan. “You were encouraging these young girls to participate in a so-called experiment but they had the good sense not to.”

On August 31 last year, Sheppard approached two 14-year-old girls who were sitting on a wall eating ice creams and “came very close to them” before handing them cards. He told them: “Just read it.” The invitation was for them to have sex for £150. The police became involved and investigated Sheppard’s activities.

“You persisted in claiming that you were a psychology expert and you weren’t doing anything wrong,” said Recorder Khan. “The police found no evidence that you were, or are, a psychologist, nor could they find any scientific publication connected to you on a website. You were passing yourself off as a scientist.

“You passed yourself off as a scientist and approached girls in the hope that they would participate in penetrative sexual activity in exchange for money. You blamed the victims for what happened.”

Gareth Henderson-Moore, mitigating, said that there was no evidence that Sheppard had a specific interest in children and he has no previous convictions for sexual offences. “There were no images recovered from any device,” said Mr Henderson-Moore.

“There have been no previous markers of any kind to indicate concerns about children and he says that he does not have any interest in children. He has been rather broad in the people that he has targeted in this enterprise and there are statements from adults also who were targeted in the same way.

“The offending has arisen as a result of his wilful disregard for the age of the persons he approached rather than a particular targeted interest in minors.”

The offences were very unpleasant. Sheppard had vulnerabilities and had a marginalised childhood and adolescence. “He considers himself to something of a mad scientist and it is perhaps that which has led him into trouble on more than one occasion,” said Mr Henderson-Moore.

“He has spent a considerable amount of time on remand. He was convicted in February and has waited in excess of nine months to know his fate. That has been nine months of anxiety. He continues to be vulnerable in a custodial environment and reports that he has difficulties with other prisoners.”

In addition to his jail sentence, Sheppard was given an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and must register as a sex offender for life.

History of racism and Holocaust denial

Sheppard had been jailed for nine months at York Crown Court in June 2018 after being convicted by a jury of using racially aggravated words to a Sky engineer. He had “barracked” the man while he was working on a satellite dish at a neighbour’s flat in June 2017.

Sheppard, then living in Selby, was also given a five-year criminal behaviour order. He had told the court that he was not happy that a black man had been given a flat in his block of flats and denied intending the neighbour to overhear racist abuse. It had been claimed that Sheppard regularly used a racist word when he saw the neighbour.

In 2008, Sheppard claimed asylum in the United States under freedom of speech laws after failing to turn up at court towards the end of a seven-week trial at Leeds Crown Court, where he was accused of publishing racially aggravated material. He was convicted in his absence of a series of charges relating to possessing, publishing and distributing racially inflammatory material.

He failed in his asylum application and was deported back to this country after being detained at a Los Angeles airport. He was later jailed for four years and 10 months but the sentence was eventually cut by a year after an appeal.

The material was anti-Semitic and racist, with what police described as “despicable references to the Holocaust”. Police said at the time: “You have to remember that there are people in our community who lived through the Holocaust. They don’t deserve to have their experiences treated in this way.”

Sheppard claimed that he was not breaking the law because he used an internet server that was based in the United States, but a judge ruled that the prosecution could go ahead. Sheppard claimed that he was being persecuted because of his right-wing views.

The police investigation began after a complaint in 2004 about a leaflet called “Tales of the Holohoax”, which had been pushed through the door of a synagogue in Blackpool. It was traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Sheppard. One leaflet found by police suggested that the Auschwitz concentration camp was a holiday camp provided by the Nazis and that Jews from all over Europe went there to enjoy a free holiday.

In 2000, a trial at Hull Crown Court was told that Sheppard, then aged 43 and living in Westbourne Avenue, west Hull, had claimed that there was “nothing wrong with being racist”. He had been found with election leaflets parodying the deaths of the Jews in the Holocaust.

The police were called in after complaints from members of the public. He declined to offer pleas and not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf.

Sheppard and a youth delivered the two-sided leaflets to homes in the Avenues area of Hull ahead of the European elections. There was reference to the “country being spoiled by millions of immigrants from the Third World” and he suggested that white people, black people, Asian people and Jewish people should be segregated by “selective breeding”.

Sheppard had been found with 153 leaflets. The youth had another 248. The prosecution told the court: “He told the police there was nothing wrong with being racist and he was campaigning on behalf of the British National Party.”

He was convicted by the jury of publishing and possessing threatening, abusive or insulting leaflets.

Hull Daily Mail

Scots far-right thug carved ‘fat’ into victim with knife before violent rape

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July 25, 2022
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Michael Coyle stood for election to Westminster as the BNP candidate in Glasgow South in 2010, and as a National Front MSP candidate for Linlithgow.

Former soldier Michael Coyle

A Far-Right thug who stood as a BNP and National Front candidate in two elections is facing a substantial prison sentence for violently raping a woman and attempting to rape her teenage daughter.

A jury heard particularly distressing evidence that former soldier Michael Coyle humiliated his 39-year-old victim by using a craft knife to carve the word “s***” into her thigh; “w****” into her arm; “old” and “saggy” on her breasts, and the letters “FAT” across her stomach.

Tattooed Coyle, 40, who also rubbed the woman’s face against a rough wall leaving a burn-like mark on her cheek, was further convicted of wilfully ill-treating her children by forcing them to stand in a cold dark room for hours and of assaulting two of her sons by presenting a knife at them and hitting one of them on the face.

He was due to be sentenced at the High Court in Livingston on Monday after earlier being remanded in custody for background reports. However, when he appeared via a videolink from Addiewell Prison, West Lothian, the court was told that no-one had got in touch to interview him for a criminal justice social work report.

Coyle’s defence counsel Mark Stewart QC said: “No responsibility for that falls on Mr Coyle. He’s not been contacted. He’s anxious for the matter to proceed as soon as possible.”

Mr Stewart tendered two letters to the court in mitigation and said a new date for sentencing had been identified as 6 September at Edinburgh High Court.

Judge Alison Stirling, who earlier described the violent and controlling abuser’s case as “complex and harrowing”, adjourned the case until then.

She said: “It’s unfortunate the criminal justice social work report is not available. It was through no fault of Mr Coyle and, as far as I’m aware, it’s not the fault of the court either.

“I hope we can have that chased up and the report will be available when he appears in front of me again on 6 September in Edinburgh.”

Giving evidence against Coyle at his trial the mum-of-five told how he didn’t allow her to go out or see friends.

She said she was “on a stopwatch” any time she left the house with violent consequences if she returned late.

She claimed he raped her after accusing her of cheating on him when she returned home late from a girls’ night out.

She said he sent messages from her Facebook account to a photographer who’d taken her picture in a rock pub saying: “Did I flirt with you? I can’t remember.” Then asking if the stranger was interested in her.

Then, she said, as she was lying on the couch he started hitting her in the face with his manhood.

She told the court: “He was saying things like ‘This is what you want isn’t it, you little s***? This is what you wanted all night.’

“He kicked me in the stomach and then he told me to get back through to bed. I thought ‘That’s over’, but it wasn’t over.”

She went on: “He pushed me backwards onto the couch. He started doing that thing with his penis again saying that’s what I wanted and I was going to get it – I was going to get my wish.

“He started pushing my legs apart with his knees and I screamed but he just covered my mouth. I was on my back on the couch and he was pushing his forearm down into my face.

“He put himself inside me and he didn’t stop until he was finished. I couldn’t fight back.”

She said she once tried to flee from the house half naked but he rugby tackled her to the floor shattering her teeth so badly she lost four on one side of her mouth and two on the other.

Her daughter, now aged 18, testified that the car bodyshop worker of Livingston, West Lothian, sexually assaulted her when she was around 12 or 13 years-old.

She told how she woke up and found him straddling her, naked from waist down, and attempting to insert his penis into her mouth.

Coyle, who has had his name added to the sex offenders’ register, stood for election to Westminster as the BNP candidate in Glasgow South in 2010 and fought as National Front candidate to become a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Linlithgow constituency.

He failed on both counts.

Daily Record

National Action: How Swansea neo-Nazi ran two terror groups

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June 7, 2022
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National Action was founded in 2013 by Ben Raymond and Alex Davies (pictured)

“Probably the biggest Nazi of the lot.”

That is how jurors heard Alex Davies, a “terrorist hiding in plain sight”, described during his latest trial.

Davies, 27, from Swansea, co-founded the neo-Nazi group National Action in 2013. He had seen it “grow from its small base in south Wales” to a national organisation, a judge said.

He was convicted of membership of a proscribed organisation between December 2016 and September 2017 after a trial at Winchester Crown Court in May.

Davies was then jailed for eight and-a-half years during sentencing at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey in London on 7 June.

National Action was one of the most extreme British far-right terror groups since World War Two.

Its members openly celebrated the death of Jo Cox MP and called for a “race war”.

One expert said the group was “so extreme you can’t go any further”.

Davies, who was once pictured giving a Nazi salute in a German concentration camp, remains an ardent national socialist with extreme far-right views.

His organisation preyed on young people, grooming them to follow his racist beliefs.

He lived in Uplands, Swansea, and his parents disagreed with his racist views.

Describing himself as “polite” and “high-achieving”, with others referring to him as bright and articulate, Davies said he “survived school and college but got into trouble at university”.

He joined the far-right British National Party as a teenager and was identified as a potential extremist through the Prevent counter-terrorism programme when he was just 15 or 16 years old.

A few years later, he left university when his far-right beliefs were exposed.

He then focused much of his time in growing National Action from his base in Swansea, heading up the south-west “branch”.

Alex Davies was pictured doing a Nazi salute at Buchenwald concentration camp

His attempts to spread his beliefs far and wide led to ambitions to stand for election in Swansea in 2017 after National Action was deemed a terrorist organisation by the UK government.

He attended National Front meetings in Bridgend in 2017, and wanted to stand as a county councillor.

Det Supt Anthony Tagg, a senior counter-terrorism officer, said he remained a danger.

He said: “He admits that he still holds that ideology, but states there’s nothing wrong with him holding that ideology, that he’s free to have those thoughts and ideas.

“We would say those are very dangerous thoughts and ideas. Somebody who sought, through violence, to forward that neo-Nazi ideology, we would say, remains a very dangerous individual”.

He added: “Working with partners and others we will seek to continue to mitigate any risk Alex Davies poses to communities across the UK.”

However, Davies was far from the only member of National Action with links to Wales.

Alex Davies and Ben Raymond founded the group

Ben Raymond, who co-founded the group with Davies, lived in Mumbles, Swansea, and was responsible for much of its racist, offensive propaganda.

He coined the term “white jihad” and was jailed last year for being a member of National Action.

Mikko Vehvilainen was a serving British Army soldier based at Sennybridge barracks in Powys when he was a member of National Action.

A self-confessed racist, he built up a private arsenal and wanted to turn the village of Llansilin in Powys, where he had a house, into a white nationalist stronghold. He was jailed in 2018.

Ben Raymond retweeted a post celebrating Jo Cox’s murder, the court heard

Alex Deakin, a former student in Aberystwyth, ran the West Midlands branch of National Action and spoke about modelling the group along the lines of the “IRA and Viet Cong”.

He was found with two explosives manuals, including a guide to making explosives, and was convicted of membership of National Action.

In 2015, Zack Davies, a 25-year-old National Action member from Mold, Flintshire, used a hammer and machete to attack a Sikh dentist in a Tesco store because of his skin colour.

Zack Davies shouted “white power” during the assault and was later convicted of attempted murder.

He had earlier posed for a selfie in front of a National Action flag while holding a blade.

Several members of NA had read and accessed copies of the manifesto of mass-murderer Anders Breivik – who killed 77 people, mostly children, in bomb and gun attacks in Norway in 2011.

Members held vocal rallies up and down the country, dressed in black, reminiscent of Oswald Moseley’s fascists of the 1930s, delivering Nazi-style salutes and carrying flags, some stating “Hitler was right”.

Alex Davies has become the 19th person to be convicted for membership of the banned fascist group.

National Action promoting one of its “conferences”

Alex Davies was described as “the founder, the galvaniser, the recruiter”, and would welcome fellow neo-Nazis to Swansea, take them for days out in Mumbles and for ice cream.

He jokingly told jurors: “The life of a terrorist.”

Prosecutors and counter terror police believe Alex Davies is unique in British history for founding two far-right terrorist organisations.

First National Action, and then the “continuity group” as it was described in court, NS131. They are organisations that now sit alongside the likes of so-called Islamic State, the IRA and Al-Qaeda.

It was put to Alex Davies in court: “You are a neo-Nazi, yes?”

He replied: “Sure.”

BBC News

National Action: Swansea Nazi Alex Davies jailed

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June 7, 2022
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A 27-year-old man described in court as a Nazi has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years for being a member of a banned fascist group.

Alex Davies, of Swansea, was a member of National Action (NA) after it was outlawed in December 2016.

A jury found him guilty after it heard NA had not disbanded after its ban, but morphed into regional factions.

He was sentenced on Tuesday at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey in London.

Judge Mark Dennis QC also ordered him to spend a further year on extended licence.

During his trial at Winchester Crown Court, he was described as “probably the biggest Nazi of the lot”.

Some members of the group had celebrated the murder of MP Jo Cox and advocated a so-called “race war”.

Addressing the defendant in the dock, Judge Dennis said: “You are an intelligent and educated young man but you have held, over a period of many years, warped and shocking prejudices.”

‘Continuity faction’

Davies co-founded NA in Swansea in 2013, before leaving to study at Warwick University, in Coventry, a university he was subsequently forced out of due to his extremist views.

Prosecutor Barnaby Jameson told the court Davies had set up a group called National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action or NS131, which was also banned by the UK government.

Mr Jameson described it as a “continuity faction” of NA that covered the southern part of Great Britain.

Saying it was “expanding and recruiting”, he called Davies a “terrorist hiding in plain sight”.

Mr Jameson said NA and NS131 used the same colours, encrypted internet provider and ideology – a throwback to Nazi Germany – as well as the same leader, and regional structure.

He added: “Who was at the centre of all this? The founder, the galvaniser, the recruiter, one Alex Davies of Swansea. He was probably the biggest Nazi of the lot.”

‘Ideology of hatred’

In his defence, Davies claimed that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes, and he was only “exercising his democratic rights”.

Davies was the 19th person to be convicted of membership of NA, the first right-wing organisation to be banned since World War Two.

National Action was founded in 2013 by Ben Raymond and Alex Davies (pictured)

Fellow founder Ben Raymond, 33, of Swindon, had previously been found guilty at a separate trial of membership of a banned terrorist group.

In December last year, Raymond was jailed for eight years with a further two years on extended licence.

Together, Davies and Raymond had worked since the group’s creation in spreading an “ideology of hatred”, described as “incredibly dangerous” by counter-terrorism police.

The government acted after members of the organisation celebrated the actions of murderer and neo-Nazi Thomas Mair, who killed MP Jo Cox in June 2016.

Among those convicted of membership since December 2016 have been British soldier and Afghanistan veteran, Finnish-born Mikko Vehvilainen, and former Met probationary police officer Ben Hannam.

One of the group’s associates was convicted of making a working pipe bomb, while another, Jack Renshaw, of Skelmersdale, Lancashire, later admitted plotting to kill MP Rosie Cooper with a machete.

Social media savvy

He was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years.

Renshaw’s plot was only foiled after a National Action member blew the whistle on his former friends, reporting the plan to counter-extremist group Hope Not Hate, which passed the information to police.

NA was social media savvy, boasting self-taught propagandists among its ranks, though its membership never exceeded 100.

They created slick computer-generated imagery – including logos, and slogans for stickers, leaflets and posters – and targeted young people in particular for recruitment.

Some of their literature called for “white jihad”, but they had also created a policy document to “make way for national socialism to enter British politics”.

Other material had designs glorifying the anti-semitic messaging of Hitler’s Germany or praising the work of SS death squads.

BBC News

Far-right extremist facing jail for trying to trick girls into bizarre sex experiment

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February 23, 2022
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A notorious far-right extremist who made sick jokes about Jewish people being exterminated during the “Holohoax” faces a jail term after being convicted of trying to trick girls into a bizarre sex experiment.

Simon Sheppard and his extremist racist views have caused serious upset and controversy in the past.

Sheppard, who has recently been residing in Bridlington, turned his attention to sexual exploitation of vulnerable children, Hull Live writes.

The 65-year-old went on trial at Hull Crown Court accused of two offences involving attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child on August 12.

He gave four teenagers a card inviting them to take part in a “sexperiment” which would have involved having sex with them.

They did not accept Sheppard’s invitations, however, and reported the incidents to their parents, who alerted the police.

He was convicted by a jury after a trial and was remanded in custody for pre-sentence reports.

Sheppard was warned that he faces a prison sentence for the offences.

He had been jailed for nine months at York Crown Court in June 2018 after being convicted by a jury of using racially aggravated words to a Sky engineer.

He had “barracked” the man while he was working on a satellite dish at a neighbour’s flat in June 2017.

Sheppard, then living in Selby, was also given a five-year criminal behaviour order.

He had told the court that he was not happy that a black man had been given a flat in his block of flats and denied intending the neighbour to overhear racist abuse.

It had been claimed that Sheppard regularly used a racist word when he saw the neighbour.

In 2008, Sheppard claimed asylum in the United States under freedom of speech laws after failing to turn up at court towards the end of a seven-week trial at Leeds Crown Court, where he was accused of publishing racially aggravated material.

He was convicted in his absence of a series of charges relating to possessing, publishing and distributing racially inflammatory material.

He failed in his asylum application and was deported back to this country after being detained at a Los Angeles airport.

He was later jailed for four years and 10 months but the sentence was eventually cut by a year after an appeal.

The material was anti-Semitic and racist, with what police described as “despicable references to the Holocaust”.

Police said at the time: “You have to remember that there are people in our community who lived through the Holocaust.

“They don’t deserve to have their experiences treated in this way.”

Sheppard claimed that he was not breaking the law because he used an internet server that was based in the United States but a judge ruled that the prosecution could go ahead.

Sheppard claimed that he was being persecuted because of his right-wing views.

The police investigation began after a complaint in 2004 about a leaflet called Tales of the Holohoax that had been pushed through the door of a synagogue in Blackpool.

In 2000, a trial at Hull Crown Court was told that Sheppard, then aged 43 and living in Westbourne Avenue, west Hull, had claimed that there was “nothing wrong with being racist”.

He had been found with election leaflets parodying the deaths of the Jews in the Holocaust.

The police were called in after complaints from members of the public.

He declined to offer pleas and not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf.

Sheppard and a youth delivered the two-sided leaflets to homes in the Avenues area of Hull ahead of the European elections.

There was reference to the “country being spoiled by millions of immigrants from the Third World” and he suggested that whites, blacks, Asians and Jews should be segregated by “selective breeding”.

In 2000, a trial at Hull Crown Court was told that Sheppard, then aged 43 and living in Westbourne Avenue, west Hull, had claimed that there was “nothing wrong with being racist”.

He had been found with election leaflets parodying the deaths of the Jews in the Holocaust.

The police were called in after complaints from members of the public.

He declined to offer pleas and not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf.

Sheppard and a youth delivered the two-sided leaflets to homes in the Avenues area of Hull ahead of the European elections.

There was reference to the “country being spoiled by millions of immigrants from the Third World” and he suggested that whites, blacks, Asians and Jews should be segregated by “selective breeding”.

Sheppard had been found with 153 leaflets. The youth had another 248.

The prosecution told the court: “He told the police there was nothing wrong with being racist and he was campaigning on behalf of the British National Party.”

He was convicted by the jury of publishing and possessing threatening, abusive or insulting leaflets.

Sheppard may have turned his attention most recently to sexual matters involving children, rather than racist matters, but he still seems odds-on to get another prison sentence when he returns to court to be dealt with for those offences.

Daily Record

BNP member given 11 years for making bombs and guns

By
June 2, 2020
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Police found 54 explosive devices from nail bombs to a booby-trapped cigarette packet at Terrance Gavan’s home



A BNP member who spent a decade building up a cache of weapons in a bedroom hideaway was jailed for 11 years today.

Bus driver Terrance Gavan manufactured highly dangerous firearms and explosives at the home where he lived with his mother in Batley, West Yorkshire.

Police discovered 54 improvised bombs including nail bombs and a booby-trapped cigarette packet, as well as 12 firearms.

The former soldier told detectives that he had “a fascination with things that go bang”, the Old Bailey heard.

But Gavan also had a “strong hostility” towards immigrants, the court heard, and planned to target an address he had seen on a television programme that he believed was linked to the 7 July bomb attacks in London.

He told police he was a BNP member and letters to him from the party, as well as a copy of its magazine Hope and Glory, were found at his home.

The court heard that handwritten notebooks were found. One note said: “The patriot must always be ready to defend his country against enemies and their governments.”

Gavan pleaded guilty to 22 counts including collecting information useful for terrorism and possessing explosives and firearms.

The Guardian

From 2010

Postman jailed for racist hate mail campaign

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June 2, 2020
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A postman who waged a hate campaign in which he posted letters and packages containing “overtly racist and depraved threats” to the attorney general and around 150 other targets has been jailed for four years.

Jefferson Azevedo, 45, also sent packages laced with white powder at the height of the US anthrax scare, and placed a hoax bomb on a bridge.

London’s Southwark crown court heard that he singled out individuals because of their support for foreign nationals in Britain or their opposition to the British National party.

Azevedo, of Portsmouth, targeted MPs, solicitors, media organisations, charities, schools, mosques and churches, as well as restaurants and car rental companies.

Some of his packages contained caustic soda. One person was slightly burned after coming into contact with the chemical, while another suffered a skin rash and many people were left “extremely frightened”, the court heard.

One victim, Julius Klein, 79, whose family was killed in the Holocaust, said he felt traumatised by a letter he received bearing a swastika.

The judge, Peter Testar, told Azevedo: “I find a significant aggravating factor in this case was the sheer nastiness which was directed against individuals. I can’t ignore the fact these offences seem to have be racially aggravated.”

Azevedo sent hate mail to the Royal Navy’s dockyard at Portsmouth, the Voluntary Overseas Organisation, and the Slough offices of the mobile telecoms company O2.

He pleaded guilty to 19 charges spanning February 2003 to March last year, and asked for a further 140 to be considered.

Alex Agbamu, prosecuting, said Azevedo had explained after his arrest that “he wanted publicity because of his concerns over immigration” and “intended to frighten”.

“He said he had the idea from the US when anthrax had been sent through the post to various people in that country,” the court heard. “He said he had carried out research in the public library, in newspapers and on the internet. If he found a story he was interested in, he would do what he could to find out how to contact the individuals concerned.”

The postman carried out his campaign in several stages. The first batch of letters, in January 2004, were sent in retaliation against plans to turn a former naval air station in Lee-on-Solent into an asylum centre.

A year later, he sent a tin foil wrap with something rattling inside it to the Buckingham Gate offices of the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith. Fifty staff, including the senior law officer, were evacuated as a precaution.

Azevedo responded to a campaign to prevent a Portsmouth schoolgirl and her family from being sent back to Syria by sending letters containing caustic soda, some with the message: “If they be black, send them back.”

In March last year, he sent hate mail to a number of residents in Portsmouth and the West Midlands bearing a swastika and the warning: “Ethnic cleansing coming soon to this area.”

William Mosley, defending, told the court his client had a background of depression that had “coloured and overshadowed much of his adult life”.

“It made him a solitary individual who has always had difficulty making friends. And this perhaps led to an outpouring of frustration in the way we have seen,” Mosley said.

Outside court, Detective Inspector John Geden said: “This was nothing less than a terror campaign. Some of his victims were extremely frightened by what occurred. If his intent was to cause upset and chaos, he has certainly done that.”

The Guardian

From 2008

Ex-BNP candidate jailed for stockpiling explosives

By
June 2, 2020
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A former British National party candidate who stockpiled explosive chemicals and ball bearings in anticipation of a future civil war was today jailed for two and a half years.

As he has already spent nearly a year in custody, however, he is likely to be released within six months.

Robert Cottage, aged 49, from Colne, Lancashire, had pleaded guilty to possession of the chemicals. He was acquitted after two trials on charges of conspiracy to cause explosions.

Sentencing Cottage at Manchester’s crown square court, Mrs Justice Swift said he continued to hold views “that veer towards the apocalyptic”. She added that his actions had been “criminal and potentially dangerous” but said there was a low risk of his committing further offences.

“It is important to understand that Cottage’s intention was that if he ever had to use the thunder flashes, it was only for the purpose of deterrence,” Mrs Justice Swift said.

Cottage had believed that, as he saw it, “the evils of uncontrolled immigration” would lead to civil war, which would be imminent and inevitable, she said.

“The pre-sentence report says Cottage continues to hold views that veer towards the apocalyptic. The risk of further offending of the same type is low but it cannot be ruled out.”

The judge said she accepted that Cottage’s intention had been to hold on to the chemicals, which included ammonia, hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid, until the outbreak of civil disturbance.

But she warned: “In letting off any such thunder flash, mistakenly believing you were under threat, you may have caused injury to some innocent person.”

Alistair Webster QC, Cottage’s counsel, told the court his client accepted that he had bought the potassium nitrate and sulphur with the intention of manufacturing gunpowder, but said this would have been used only to create thunder flash-style bangers to scare off intruders.;

Cottage, who stood three times unsuccessfully for the BNP in local council elections, was arrested last September after police found the stockpile of chemicals at his home in Talbot Street, Colne.

The police took action after Cottage’s wife told a social worker of her concerns about the items he was storing and, and about her husband’s stated belief that immigration was out of control.

Police also found ball bearings and a document about bomb-making from the do-it-yourself explosives-making manual The Anarchist Cookbook on his computer. He also had air pistols, crossbows and a stockpile of food.

“I believe it is everyone’s God-given right to defend themselves and their families if they are attacked,” Cottage told the court during his trial. “The breakdown of the financial system will inevitably put an unbearable strain on the social structures of this country.”

Cottage claimed in court that, with the armed forces in the Middle East and the police insufficiently trained, the authorities would be unable to offer people protection.

He added that immigration was a luxury that Britain could not afford, but that he drove a bus for children with disabilities and had a good relationship with the Asian children among them.

A second man, David Jackson, 62, a dentist, was also charged with conspiracy to cause explosions but was cleared after the jury twice failed to reach verdicts.

A BNP spokesman said after sentencing that the prosecution had been brought for political reasons. “We’re not condoning it, but it’s a quid pro quo to appease the Muslims,” said Dr Phil Edwards, of the BNP.

“To keep them quiet, we’ll snatch someone from white society. We certainly don’t support the bloke. We condemn all forms of violence … but I wouldn’t have thought you could do any harm with what he had.”

Dr Edwards said Cottage would not be standing as a candidate for the BNP again. “We never have anyone in the party with criminal convictions,” he said, because “lefties and people on your newspaper” would publicise the fact.
The Guardian

From 2007

Race-hate man guilty of shootings

By
June 2, 2020
Uncategorized



A gunman who had threatened to “kill all black people” has been found guilty of three counts of attempted murder.

Former boxer John Laidlaw, 24, went on a shooting spree in Islington, north London, last May, the Old Bailey heard.

It is not clear whether the attacks were related to his threats against black people.

He shot Abu Kamara in Upper Street before accidentally shooting Emma Sheridan at Finsbury Park Tube station, as he aimed at a second man.

Laidlaw, from Holloway, north London, was also found guilty of two firearms charges.

Judge Samuel Wiggs warned him that he faced an indeterminate jail sentence for the public’s protection.

“These offences, certainly the first incident, seem to be almost completely random,” he said.

Detective Sergeant Nick Bonomini, of Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Directorate, said: “He has previously demonstrated a high level of aggression towards black people that appears, given his words, to be based on their race.

“But there was no evidence in these current two shootings that suggest that this formed the same sort of motivation for him and on that we have an open mind.”

Social worker Mr Kamara, 44, had been with a group of work friends going for a drink after a game of badminton.

When a sports bag belonging to one of his colleagues brushed against a friend of Laidlaw’s, the gunman reacted by pulling out a gun and shooting Mr Kamara.

The bullet was deflected off Mr Kamara’s chin and entered his neck through his Adam’s apple.

It went through his voicebox before finally lodging near his spinal column.

Half an hour after shooting Mr Kamara, Laidlaw shot at a man called Evans Baptiste.

Mr Baptiste and a friend had been chasing Laidlaw after recognising him as the man who had attacked Mr Baptiste with a hammer earlier in the year.

Mistaken identity

But the bullet brushed past Mr Baptiste and struck 26-year-old Emma Sheridan in the back.

A passing medical student plucked the bullet from her back before ambulance crews took her to hospital for treatment.

When police caught up with Laidlaw at the home of a family friend in Kingston, south-west London, he dived through a glass door and ran into a shed to hide.

n court, he claimed he was watching television all day during the shootings and was the victim of mistaken identity.

Three weeks before the shooting spree, Laidlaw admitted in court attacking a black motorist.

When he was arrested he behaved violently and was “foaming at the mouth” according to a police document.

“In the presence and hearing of the black female jailer the defendant made racist comments and remarks, stating he was a member of the BNP and that he hated all black people,” the document says.

He also stated that he was going to kill all black people, said the report.

BBC News

From 2007

Racist jailed for arson attack on mosque

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June 2, 2020
Uncategorized

RACIST firebomber Mark Bulman has been jailed for five years after trying to torch the Broad Street mosque.

The 22-year-old used a British National Party leaflet as a fuse in a petrol-filled beer bottle which he hurled through a window at the place of worship.

But the Molotov cocktail failed to ignite so the self-confessed bigot handed himself in to the police saying that they would find his fingerprints on it.

And as well as trying to burn the mosque to ash and rubble’ Bulman also daubed racist graffiti on the walls.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that police received a call shortly before 1am on Thursday, August 17 from the defendant.

After he told them what he had done an officer went to the scene and found him near Fleming Way.

The racist was armed with a chair leg which he said he needed to protect himself from the enemy’.

He referred to the Broad Street area as enemy territory’ because it had businesses owned by people from ethnic minorities.

Bulman also daubed swastikas on the outside of the mosque as well as other racist messages on a wall in Turl Street.

In a rambling interview Bulman told police of his dislike for anyone apart from white British people.

When his house was searched, officers found a variety of racist material and he admitted being a BNP sympathiser and had been on their rallies in the past.

Bulman, of Montrose Close, Moredon, admitted arson, attempted arson and two counts of religiously aggravated criminal damage.

Philip Warren, defending, said “On any view of it, it is a horrible and serious business.

“It is highly offensive, deliberately offensive, and the offence and outrage caused must have been massive.”

He said his client had told the psychiatrist that he wanted to reduce the mosque to “ash and rubble” and “to give the establishment and lefties a wake up call.”

But Mr Warren said: “This was by any standards an amateur and inept act not a concerted attempt to burn the building.”

Having spent 140 days in prison on remand he said that his client, who had no previous convictions, had time to reflect on his “skewed views” of society and wanted to change.

From now on he said that he sought to use the pen rather than the sword to get his opinions across and Mr Warren said Bulman wished to address the court.

But Judge Douglas Field refused to allow it saying: “I am not going to allow a political speech.”

“There has to be a deterrent element to my sentence to deter stupid people like you.

“You are a racial bigot. It was your wish and intention to burn that building to the ground. We have mixed races in Swindon and it is extremely important that we all get on together.”

Swindon Advertiser

From 2007