Friday 20 May 2022 07:37 PM UK's 'youngest terror convict' spared jail after he told judge Columbine-style ... trends now
A 14-year-old, thought to be one of the UK's youngest convicted terrorists, has avoided a custodial sentence despite a judge branding some of his comments 'abhorrent'.
The boy shared extreme right-wing views online, expressed racist views, talked about carrying out a Columbine-style school shooting and wrote several suicide notes.
He was aged just 13 when he downloaded the Anarchist's Cookbook, about how to make plastic explosives and a document about Middle Eastern bomb designs.
The teenager, who cannot be identified by the media, admitted three counts of possessing a terrorist publication at a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court in January.
A 14-year-old, thought to be one of the UK's youngest convicted terrorists, has avoided a custodial sentence despite a judge branding some of his comments 'abhorrent'. The defendant, from the Darlington area, appeared before Newton Aycliffe Youth Court in County Durham (pictured), where the UK's Chief Magistrate, Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring sentenced him
The defendant, from the Darlington area, appeared before Newton Aycliffe Youth Court in County Durham, where the UK's Chief Magistrate, Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring sentenced him.
The judge heard how counter terror police were alerted after the boy posted on social media about blowing up an orphanage.
A search of his family home led police to seize his computer, a hard drive and mobile phone, revealing a worrying history of interest in racist ideology, Nazism, the Columbine massacre, carrying out a school shooting and suicide.
Jane Stansfield, prosecuting, said the boy was just 11 when he downloaded an image of Hitler onto his computer.
The boy was spared jail after he told a judge that his plans to launch a Columbine-style massacre were a fantasy.
Scotland Yard's Counter-Terrorism Command received information from an Instagram user that an individual was planning on blowing up an orphanage and trying to get firearms for an attack similar to the Columbine High School shooting.
Durham Police ran subscriber checks and found the account was associated with the boy's mother in Darlington.
When they arrested him on July 1 last year, in front of his mother and aunt, the young man told police: 'I've been talking a lot online.'
Investigations revealed that the boy, who cannot be named, was just 11 when he started to become interested in neo-Nazi politics and two months after his 13th birthday when he began downloading bomb-making manuals.
Newton-Aycliffe Youth Court in County Durham, heard that the boy, who is now aged 14, was very interested in military-related things, including kit and weaponry and played war type video games online.
'There seems to be a cross-over from simple military interests to evidence of right-wing interest,' Jane Stansfield, prosecuting, said.
On Christmas Eve 2019 just before his 12th birthday, the boy downloaded image of Adolf Hitler in 1933, showing his first interest in the extreme right-wing.
Patrick Ireland became known as the 'boy in the window' as millions of Americans watched him make a desperate attempt to save his own life by jumping out of a window that had been shattered in gunfire. Ireland was shot twice in the head, causing the right side of his body to be paralyzed. He had to re-learn how to eat, walk and talk, eventually graduating from Columbine as the valedictorian
A few weeks later, on January 13 2020, he then downloaded the Tor browser to help him search the dark web anonymously.
He took an interest in a US neo-Nazi group called
