Teen Calling for War Against Jews and Gays From Granny's Shed Avoids Jail
A teenage neo-Nazi from Cornwall, England, was sentenced on Monday for possessing and disseminating terrorist material—but he won't be spending any time behind bars.
Instead, the teen—whose name was withheld due to him being a minor—received a 24-month youth rehabilitation order, which is a non-custodial punishment that comes with strict requirements, including a de-radicalization process. The prosecution in the case said the boy, now 16, committed his first terror offense when he was only 13 years old. Officials say this makes him the youngest person in Britain to ever be convicted of terrorism offenses.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), England's principal public agency for criminal prosecutions, said the boy's first known offense occurred in July 2018, when he downloaded a manual from the internet on how to make different types of explosive compounds. CPS noted that eventually he collected other electronic documents, including ones with instructions on how to make napalm, Molotov cocktails and one describing how to build a homemade AK-47 assault rifle.
Police arrested him at the home of his grandmother, where he lived. There, they found a Nazi flag and "1488" painted on a shed he used. The number is commonly used by neo-Nazis; the "14" refers to a white supremacist slogan, and the "88" references the eighth letter of the alphabet —HH— for "Heil Hitler."
Jenny Hopkins, head of the Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division of the CPS, 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."
She continued: "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."
The boy was reportedly the British head within a since-banned, international online community of neo-Nazis called Feuerkrieg Division (FKD). The British segment (known as "FKD_GB") he led was formed in June 2019.
Prosecutors said he had regularly posted messages in chat forums about killing gay people, Jews and non-whites. These messages were said to include details about using nail bombs, firearms and other methods for the theoretical killings.
Even though he claimed it was all an act, the teen nonetheless pleaded guilty to two counts of disseminating terrorist publications and 10 counts of possessing terrorist publications. The dissemination charges are considered the most serious, and were brought on him for posting a picture online of a nuclear explosion over the Houses of Parliament and for sharing a 432-page guerrilla-warfare manual with the international leader of the FKD.
After the British teen's arrest, the leader of Feuerkrieg Division was revealed to be a 13-year-old in Estonia, according to the English television channel iTV. He was deemed too young to be charged with a serious offense, despite him using encrypted forums to demand followers "rape Christian nuns in Hitler's name" and called "Jewish, black, gay and transgender people" his enemies. The Estonian teen is currently in a de-radicalization program.
