13-year-old white supremacist avoids jail after vowing to hang gay people and ‘shoot up their parades’
Britain’s youngest white supremacist has evaded a custodial sentence after calling for a war against minority groups (CPS/Getty)
A teen neo-Nazi believed to be Britain’s youngest white supremacist terrorist has evaded a custodial sentence after calling for a war against minority groups including Jews and gay people from his grandmother’s shed in Cornwall.
The teenage boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, evaded a custodial sentence at the Old Bailey on Monday but was made subject to a 24-month youth rehabilitation order.
He had admitted 10 counts of possessing terrorist material and two of disseminating terrorist publications.
Now 16, the boy was 13 when he joined neo-Nazi website Fascist Forge, venting against minority groups, calling for the hanging of gays and “shooting up their parades” as well as the “gassing” of Jewish people.
Teen white supremacist collected haul of extremist guidebooks
He also collected a haul of terrorist materials – including an explosives manual and guidebooks on how to make napalm and Molotov cocktails, learn knife fighting skills, and build an AK47 assault rifle using readily available supplies.
At age 14, he became the head of the British wing of banned neo-Nazi terrorist organisation Feuerkrieg Division, recruiting five others. The organisation was later revealed to be run by another 13-year-old in Estonia, who in his country was deemed too young to be charged with committing an offence.
Britain’s youngest white supremacist has evaded a custodial sentence (CPS)
When police arrested the British boy, who lived with grandmother, they found a Nazi flag and neo-Nazi code numbers 1488 painted on the shed.
Despite posting messages about killing gay people, Jews and non-whites using nail bombs, firearms and other methods, he later told police he did not have racist, homophobic or antisemitic views but wanted “to look cool” and “look like [he] was doing something for the cause”.
‘Disturbing’ that 13-year-olds hold neo-Nazi views
Crown Prosecution Service counter-terror chief Jenny Hopkins said: “People will rightly be disturbed that a 13-year-old should hold the most appalling neo-Nazi beliefs and start collecting manuals on bomb-making and firearms.
“He claimed not to have racist views and just wanted to appear ‘cool’, but the body of evidence led to him pleading guilty to possession and dissemination of terrorist material.”
Harrys Puusepp of the Estonian Internal Security Service told ITV News that while Feuerkrieg Division appeared to include children, “if people who are there in the chat room act on what is being discussed there, then the threat is not illusional, it’s real.”
The Estonian boy, who is undergoing a de-radicalisation programme, had called for followers to “rape Christian nuns in Hitler’s name” and had listed “Jewish, Black, gay and transgender people” as enemies.
Puusepp continued: “Exchanging radical, violent ideas is a truly global phenomenon which means there are no borders.”
He added that terrorists deemed lone actors “don’t radicalise by themselves… they are being affected by the material that’s out there on the internet and also when they are discussing those ideas with others”.
The terror investigator added: “I think there is more hope with younger people than perhaps with people whose frustration has piled up over the long, long years for different reasons and perhaps it’s harder to bring them back to normal life than it is to make sure a kid has a chance for a decent life.”
