At 14 he went on to share far-right extremist ideology in online chatrooms.PHOTO: UNSPLASH
SINGAPORE — The teenage leader of a far-right organization cell in Britain has become the youngest person in the country to have committed offenses related to terrorism.
He was 13 at the time.
Now 16, the teenager, who cannot be named due to legal reasons, admitted to 12 offenses – two for dissemination of terrorist documents and 10 for possession of terrorist material – when he appeared in court on Monday (Feb 01) for sentencing. The sentencing is due to resume on Feb 8.
The court was told that the teen operated out of his grandmother’s cottage in Cornwall in south-western England.
At 13, he downloaded a bomb-making manual and began gathering terrorist material. Later in the same year he joined the neo-Nazi cult Fascist Forge, and at 14 he went on to share far-right extremist ideology in online chatrooms, the Guardian reported.
The newspaper said he told police during an interview that he made racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic comments “to look cool”. He talked about “gassing” Jewish people, hanging gay people and wanting to “shoot up their parades”.
The prosecutor told the court that police in 2019 found a Nazi flag and racist slogan in the grandmother’s home, where he lived, as well as several manuals about making weapons and instructions on how to kill people on his phone and computer.
The prosecutor said: “The age is the alarming factor and his conduct betrays a maturity beyond his chronological age.”
The court also heard that the offender was sending encrypted messages to another teenager in Estonia, the founder of far-right Feuerkrieg Division (FKD), to discuss their hatred of particular groups, the BBC said. Last year reports said that the FKD’s founder was 13 years old.
The international group that existed largely online “honors some of the most notorious racist murders from recent times” with members sharing bomb-making techniques and encouraging each other to practice how to shoot and make weapons, the Daily Mail reported.
It described the group as a white supremacist organization that has called for a “white jihad” against minority groups, including Jews, Muslims, gays and lesbian, religious leaders and the police.
Reports said that the British teenager had set up FKD’s British cell, and recruited British members from online platforms, such as Paul Dunleavy, a teenager from Rugby, who was jailed last year for preparing a terrorist attack.
Previously, Britain’s youngest terrorist was a 14-year-old boy, known as RXG, who plotted to murder police officers in Australia on Anzac Day. The youth, from Blackburn, Lancashire, instructed an Australian militant to launch attacks during a 2015 parade.
He was jailed for life in October 2015 after admitting to inciting terrorism overseas. Last month, the Parole Board decided he could be released, the Evening Standard reported.
On Jan 27, Singapore disclosed that a 16-year-old Protestant Christian of Indian ethnicity was detained in December under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for planning terrorist attacks on two mosques in Woodlands, becoming the youngest person to be dealt with for terrorist-related activities under the ISA.
Singapore’s Internal Security Department said on Jan 27 the Secondary 4 student was influenced by the attacks on two mosques in New Zealand in 2019.
“He was self-radicalized, motivated by a strong antipathy towards Islam and a fascination with violence,” the department said in a media release.