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Far-right cell found guilty of terror offences

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March 29, 2022
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Liam Hall, Stacey Salmon, Daniel Wright and Samuel Whibley had denied multiple offences

Four members of a “fascist” cell who made pistol parts on a 3D printer and celebrated right-wing attacks have been convicted of a range of offences.

Daniel Wright, 29, Liam Hall, 31, and Stacey Salmon, 29, all from Keighley, West Yorkshire, and Samuel Whibley, 29, from Menai Bridge, Anglesey, had denied the charges.

During the trial prosecutors said the four “celebrated racist violence and killing” through online messages.

They will be sentenced at a later date.

A two-month trial, which was moved to Doncaster Crown Court due to problems at Sheffield Crown Court, heard the defendants used online messaging app Telegram to exchange terror manuals, share racist ideology and post videos of atrocities.

Prosecutor Annabel Darlow QC said the group described killers such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway, as “saints”.

She told jurors the group also had an “active interest in the manufacture of explosives and weaponry”.

Daniel Wright, of Whinfield Avenue, Keighley, was found guilty of disseminating a terrorist publication, possessing articles for terrorist purposes, and the collection of information contrary to the Terrorism Act.

He was also found guilty of possessing and manufacturing a firearm.
3D printed gun

Counter terrorism recovered a partially constructed 3D printed gun from Hall and Salmon’s home

Liam Hall, of Hill Top Walk, Keighley, was cleared of possessing articles for terrorist purposes, but found guilty of possessing and manufacturing a firearm.

Hall’s partner Stacey Salmon, of the same address, was also cleared of possessing articles for terrorist purposes, but convicted of possessing a firearm.

Samuel Whibley, of Derwen Deg, Menai Bridge, Anglesey, was found guilty of the encouragement of terrorism and disseminating a terrorist publication.

Det Ch Supt Martin Snowden, head of counter terrorism policing north east, said unknown to the four defendants an undercover officer had infiltrated their online chat.

“None of their security measures were enough to maintain their anonymity, or ultimately prevent their arrest and prosecution,” he said.

He said the group had a “deeply entrenched extreme right-win mindset”.

“The vitriolic hatred expressed by these defendants went far beyond an intolerance of others,” he said.

“While the group had no clear target at the time of their arrest, they pushed relentlessly for violent action in pursuit of their objectives.

The judge, Mr Justice Spencer said he hoped to sentence the four before the end of May, however reports needed to be prepared about Wright and Whibley to help him assess the danger they presented.

“There needs to be a lot of thought given over to the sentences in this case,” he said.

BBC News

‘Fascist cell’ convicted of terror and firearm offences after trying to make 3D-printed gun

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March 29, 2022
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Two of the defendants were members of an online group where terror manuals and weapons guides were shared among neo-Nazis

Members of a “fascist cell” have been convicted of terror and firearms offences after police discovered they were trying to manufacture 3D-printed guns.

Samuel Whibley, 29, Daniel Wright, 29, Liam Hall, 31, and his girlfriend Stacey Salmon, 29, were convicted of a total of 15 offences on Thursday.

A trial at Sheffield Crown Court heard that in the home Hall and Salmon shared with their children, officers found an improvised explosive device, homemade explosive substances, chemicals and parts of a 3D-printed handgun.

The unfinished “improvised firearm” found in the kitchen was found to have Hall, Salmon and Wright’s DNA on it.

The trio lived in Keighley, while Whibley is from Anglesey in Wales and had not met them in person, the court heard.

He had set up a neo-Nazi channel on the encrypted Telegram app, and linked private chat, which Wright joined.

Prosecutor Annabel Darlow QC said the channel and chat “encouraged readers to take violent action”.

“It wasn’t about academic interest or theorising, this was about finding the ways and means to copy those responsible for the worst extreme right wing atrocities,” she told jurors.

“These four defendants were members of an extreme fascist and terroristic cell during the first four months of 2021. They embraced extreme right-wing propaganda and celebrated racist violence and killing.”

The defendants had denied all charges. Whibley, of Menai Bridge in Wales, was convicted of two counts of encouraging terrorism and two counts of “providing a service” where people could obtain terrorist publications through the Oaken Hearth Telegram channel and a linked chat group.

He was also convicted of four counts of disseminating terrorist publications including bomb-making instructions, “killing techniques” and a manual on making a 3D-printed firearm.

Wright, of Braithwaite in Keighley, was convicted of one count of disseminating a terrorist pulbication and three counts of collecting information useful to a terrorist.

He and Hall, also of Keighley, were jointly convicted of manufacturing a prohibited firearm.

They are also charged, alongside Ms Salmon, of possessing a prohibited 3D-printed firearm. They were additionally convicted of illegally possessing that firearm, alongside Salmon.

She and her partner Hall were acquitted of possessing the unfinished weapon for a terrorist purpose, but Wright was convicted on the same charge.

The Independent.

Leeds teenager admits extreme right-wing social media posts

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March 15, 2022
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A 16-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to terrorism offences after a member of the public reported his extreme right-wing posts on social media.

The teenager, from Leeds, was arrested in May 2021 and was later charged with disseminating a terrorist publication and possessing terrorist material.

He was sentenced at Leeds Youth Court on Monday to a 12-month referral order for each offence, which will run concurrently.

The boy cannot be named due to his age.

The order means he will be referred to a panel consisting of two trained community volunteers and a member of the youth offending team in a bid to address his offending behaviour.

The teenager was also ordered by the court to pay costs and was given a criminal behaviour order that will last until the day before his 18th birthday.

Det Ch Supt Martin Snowden, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing North East, said he was “immensely grateful” the offence had been reported to police.

“We would always encourage members of the public to report material of concern so it can be removed and appropriate action taken,” he said.

“We have seen before how online extremism can fuel hate and influence others, and that is true of this case.”

BBC News

Nelson far-right fanatic who had terror handbook jailed

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February 19, 2022
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Conrad Howarth pleaded guilty to gathering terrorist material

A man who possessed a “terrorist handbook” and had an “obsession” with far-right ideologies has been jailed.

Conrad Howarth, from Nelson in Lancashire, pleaded guilty to gathering terrorist material and also possessing extreme pornography.

The 41-year-old was jailed at Manchester Crown Court for four-and-a-half years.

Counter-terror officer Det Ch Insp Clare Devlin said right-wing terrorism “will not be tolerated”.

“The evidence seized in this investigation was concerning and demonstrated Howarth’s obsession with far right wing ideologies,” he said.

Howarth, of Pinfold Place, admitted a charge of collecting, recording, possessing or viewing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

Police said they found the extreme pornography on a laptop when searching his home.

BBC News

Teenage neo-Nazi jailed for sending out bomb manual disguised as Minecraft handbook

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February 6, 2022
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A Neo-Nazi teenager who sent a bomb manual disguised as a Minecraft video game guide to fellow extremists has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Connor Burke, 19, had books on Nazis and Hitler’s Third Reich in his bedroom, an SS dagger, racist and anti-Semitic propaganda on his computer, and hate-filled material including a video about the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand.

Anti-terror police raided his family home in Bexleyheath in February last year, after Burke shared a 27-page bomb-making manual with fellow extremists on a Telegram chat group.

The electronic document was named Minecraft_Bow_Ammo_Types.pdf in an apparent attempt to disguise its true nature.

Further terrorist documents, including the Anarchy Cookbook Version 2000, which gave recipes and advice for making explosives, had also been downloaded by Burke and disguised as handbooks to the popular video game Minecraft.

Burke’s barrister, Naeem Mian QC, said the teenager’s “mortified” parents were at Woolwich crown court for the sentencing hearing, and believe he “fell down a rabbit hole” online during lockdown.

“It is every parent’s worst nightmare”, he said. “Through a toxic combination coming together, a young man who is from a very loving background but socially isolated found he was having to stay at home as many people were during lockdown. So the isolation was even greater.

“He was therefore spending too much time on his computer and on the internet, in his room by himself.

“He is a young man who has disappeared down something one would term as a rabbit hole. A very dark rabbit hole which became something of an echo chamber.”

Mr Mian said Burke found a “sense of belonging” in the far right chatrooms and messaging apps, where “what he had to say mattered”.

The court heard Burke downloaded the extremist files between September and December 2020.

He was a member of a Telegram “English Only” group, and had posted a list of the names of fellow university students in September 2020 with the comment “my lectures are full of P***s”.

The following month he shared the bomb manual Minecraft file.

Judge Christopher Kinch QC said material of Burke’s computer, including an image of the teen posing with an imitation rifle, Nazi salutes, and a picture of his dagger nicknamed “Jew Smiter”, showed his extremist mindset.

“You got yourself caught up in some very dangerous activity and you waded in deep”, he said.

The judge noted a letter from the teenager’s parents, calling him a “loving, respectful, gentle young man” who they believe had been motivated to “make an impression” with people he met online, and said he believes Burke has a good chance of rehabilitation.

Burke pleaded guilty to disseminating a terrorist publication and four counts of possession of a document likely to be of use to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

He will be on licence for an extra year at the end of his three-and-a-half year sentence.

Evening Standard

Neo-Nazi terror offender ordered to read Jane Austen jailed after ‘unduly lenient’ sentence quashed

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January 19, 2022
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A neo-Nazi terror offender who was ordered to read Jane Austen has been jailed after judges overturned his “unduly lenient” sentence.

Ben John, now 22, was handed a suspended prison sentence for possessing a terrorist document in August, meaning he would not be jailed unless he broke the conditions of a Serious Crime Prevention Order

At the time, Judge Timothy Spencer QC urged him to swap far-right propaganda for English literature, asking John: “Have you ever read Dickens? Austen? Well, start now. Start with Pride and Prejudice. Shakespeare? Try Twelfth Night. Dickens, start with A Tale of Two Cities and, if you have time, think about Hardy and think about Trollope.”

He sentenced John to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a one-year extended licence and a five-year Serious Crime Prevention Order.

Court of Appeal judges found that sentence was unlawful and sent John to prison for two years.

He was ordered to hand himself in at a police station by 4pm on Thursday, when he will be taken into custody.

Judges ruled that under the Sentencing Code which binds judges, sentences of more than two years cannot be suspended, and John’s term amounted to three years.

Lord Justice Holroyde did not criticise Judge Spencer’s remarks, and said he had been “in the best possible position to assess the offender”.

“It was certainly a very lenient sentence but we are not persuaded that in the circumstances in this case, the length of the term of imprisonment was itself unduly lenient,” he added.

“It is because the term was unlawful that we conclude it was unduly lenient.”

The Independent

Darlington boy youngest to be convicted of terrorist offence

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January 19, 2022
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A schoolboy has become the youngest person in the UK to be convicted of terror offences.

At Westminster Magistrates’ Court, the 14-year-old, who cannot be named, admitted three counts of possessing information useful to a terrorist.

The boy, from Darlington, was arrested in July last year when he was 13 as part of an investigation into extreme right-wing terrorism.

He was bailed and will be sentenced on 1 April at Newton Aycliffe Youth Court.

The teenager, who had been active on racist online forums, was charged last week with possessing information useful to a terrorist, with the offences relating to a period on or before July 2021, when he was 13.

The investigation was carried out by Counter Terrorism Policing North East.

Until now the youngest British terror offender was a neo-Nazi from Cornwall who downloaded one of several terrorist manuals when he was 13 but he was two years older when he was arrested.

The youngest person convicted of planning a terrorist attack in the UK was a 16-year-old boy, also from Country Durham.

BBC News

Met PC found guilty of neo-Nazi group membership

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April 2, 2021
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A Met Police officer has been convicted of being a member of a banned neo-Nazi terrorist organisation.

Benjamin Hannam, of Enfield, north London, was found guilty of membership of the banned right-wing extremist group National Action (NA).

He was also convicted of lying on his Met Police application and having terror documents detailing knife combat and making explosive devices.

Hannam is the first British officer to be convicted of a terrorism offence.

He was released on conditional bail ahead of sentencing on 23 April.

At the Old Bailey, Judge Anthony Leonard QC lifted a ban on reporting the case after the 22-year-old admitted possessing an indecent image of a child, which was to have been the subject of a separate trial.

The PC had been working as a probationary officer for the Met for nearly two years before he was found on a leaked database of users of extreme right-wing forum Iron March.

He had signed up to the forum when he joined the London branch of neo-Nazi group NA in March 2016.

Jurors were shown a video of the PC spraying the group’s symbol on a derelict building in 2017

Following his arrest in March last year, officers discovered a NA business card and badges, as well as writings about his involvement with the group.

Jurors were told that on the day the group was banned in December 2016, Hannam had transferred the knife-fighting manual from his computer to folder named “NA” on a memory stick along with other extremist texts.

Detectives also found he was in possession of multiple prohibited images including “pseudo images” of young boys and girls.

Hannam was filmed taking part in a boxing session for members of the banned group

Jurors convicted him of remaining in NA for several months after it was banned in December 2016, as well as two counts of fraud for lying about his far-right past in a Met application form.

Prosecutor Dan Pawson-Pounds said the fraud was “intimately connected” to Hannam’s membership of the outlawed group.

Hannam had denied all the offences, telling the court he had never been a member of NA despite regularly attending group meetings.

He claimed that he was interested by the “look and aesthetic of fascism”, but that he was not a racist and had actually challenged group members when they expressed such views.

The officer said he had been “desperate to impress” an older NA organiser and his association with the group ended before he began working for the Met.

Officers found a National Action business card and badges in Hannam’s bedroom

The court heard that Hannam was part of a successor version of the extremist group called NS131 – which was itself outlawed in September 2017 – and that he appeared in its online videos spray-painting neo-Nazi logos.

He had joined the Met in 2018 and during his training was actually shown videos relating to NA.

He passed out early in 2019 but was identified on the neo-Nazi web forum by detectives.

It can now be reported that, soon after he joined the Met, Hannam was found to have committed gross misconduct after he was found using a young relative’s travel card to use public transport for free.

Scotland Yard said it had reviewed Hannam’s time in the Met and found no evidence his actions had been influenced by any extremist ideology.

He is currently suspended from duty.

The 22-year-old had denied all the offences

After the jury returned their verdict, the judge said Hannam had been “convicted of serious offences” and was being bailed as a “courtesy”.

Jenny Hopkins, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said Hannam’s “lies have caught up with him and he’s been exposed as an individual with deeply racist beliefs”.

“Benjamin Hannam would not have got a job as a probationary police constable if he’d told the truth about his membership of a banned, far-right group,” she added.

Cdr Richard Smith, of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said “the public expect police officers to carry out their duties with the very highest levels of honesty and integrity.

“Sadly, PC Hannam showed none of these qualities.”

BBC News

Met Police officer who acted as recruiter for banned neo-Nazi terror group faces jail

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April 1, 2021
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A Metropolitan Police officer is facing jail after acting as a recruiter for a banned neo-Nazi terrorist group.

PC Benjamin Hannam acted as a recruiter for National Action and offshoot group NS131

PC Benjamin Hannam, from Edmonton in north London, is the first police officer to be convicted of involvement in far-right terrorism.

The 22-year-old was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of being a member of National Action, a proscribed terrorist organisation, along with two counts of possessing documents useful for terrorism and for fraud.

After the police constable’s arrest in March last year, detectives found an image on his iPhone showing him in police uniform, with a Hitler-style moustache superimposed on his face and a Nazi badge on his lapel.

They also found he had downloaded a knife-fighting manual and a copy of the “manifesto” of the right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people, mostly children, in bomb and gun attacks in Norway in 2011.

Prosecutors said the Breivik document included bomb-making instructions and “exhaustive justifications for his mass-casualty attacks”.

PC Hannam, who worked with the emergency response team in Haringey, north London, joined the Met in March 2018.
Sky News

Teen who called himself Hitler sentenced for terror offences

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March 30, 2021
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A schoolboy who created his own online neo-Nazi group has been sentenced after admitting terrorism offences.

The 16-year-old, from Newcastle, called himself Hitler and set up accounts on multiple social media platforms which glorified extreme right-wing violence.

He had pleaded guilty to four counts of inviting support for National Action, a banned neo-Nazi organisation.

At North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court he was given a 12-month intensive referral order.

The youth had also admitted three counts of encouraging terrorism and four of stirring up racial and religious hatred.

He was further made the subject of terrorism notification requirements for 10 years, meaning he will have to keep the authorities informed of his whereabouts and activities.

After first being arrested in October 2019 he continued to post racist material.

The boy committed his first terrorism offence aged 15, making him the third youngest person in the UK to commit a terror offence.

‘Glorified murder’

National Action was banned in 2016 under counter terror laws, making it illegal to be a member of the organisation or invite support for it.

The BBC is not naming the small group created by the youth.

A manifesto said the group’s aim was to turn Britain into a white ethno-state free of Jewish influence by any means necessary.

Hiding behind an online alias, the boy created his own anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim propaganda. He also posted National Action images.

On the Gab social media site he glorified the murder of the MP Jo Cox by a neo-Nazi, as well as the far-right killer responsible for the deadly Finsbury Park attack in June 2017.

He created stickers bearing his group’s logo which he plastered in his local area.

A pre-sentence expert report said the autistic teenager probably had “only an approximate understanding of the words and concepts deployed” and it is “likely that he did not see the wider ramifications of his activities, now seamlessly replaced apparently by interests such as Dad’s Army”.

BBC News