Man found guilty of plotting terrorist attack on LGBT pride event
(Greater Manchester Police)
A white supremacist has been convicted of planning to carry out a terrorist attack on a pride event.
Ethan Stables, 20, showed no reaction as he was found guilty at Leeds crown court.
He remains in custody before sentencing Monday afternoon.
Stables gathered a machete, knives, an axe, an air rifle and a ball bearing gun with the intent of attacking the New Empire pub in Cumbria.
(Twitter/ethan_stables)
His plan was foiled after he told fellow members of a Nazi-themed Facebook group that he was going to murder people at the event in June last year.
During the case he claimed his threats on social media to attack people at the pride event with a machete were to impress his friends.
He also claimed to be bisexual.
This led a woman in Staffordshire to phone the police and post a warning on Twitter.
(Facebook/ethan stables)
Stables was arrested near the pub at 10pm on the night of the Pride event, on June 23 last year.
The jury of seven men and five women has heard that the defendant was on a final reconnaissance trip, and planned to return later that night to carry out his plot.
In one chilling online post he wrote: “I’m going to war tonight.”
He was also gathering the means to make an improvised explosive device, the court was told.
The defendant claimed in court that he had forgotten he owned a machete when writing on Facebook that he was going to kill gay people with one.
(Flickr/Brian Turner)
The Barrow resident said he wrote the posts to impress his friends, claiming: “Actually I am bisexual.”
When he was asked whether he had had a same-sex experience, he responded: “Yes”.
Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford described the idea that Stables was trying to impress his far-right friends as “nonsense”.
The prosecutor has previously described Stables as a “white supremacist and Nazi – a supporter of Adolf Hitler, if you will.”
He told the court: “Between 2016 and his arrest in 2017, he was planning and preparing to commit acts of terrorism directed towards members of these groups but, primarily, directed towards people who were lesbian or gay.”
Stables became enraged when he heard about the pub’s Pride event, the prosecutor added.
“His purpose in these acts of preparation was to launch a murderous attack on members of these communities – in particular, the prosecution suggests, people who were gay,” Sandiford said.
