A teenage boy accused of plotting a terror attack on nearby synagogues was arrested in his uniform and wrote that some people at his school “should be shot,” a court has heard.
The 15-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, is accused of plotting terrorist attacks, including on a synagogue in Newcastle, after he joined a far-right group called ‘The Base’.
Jurors heard that ‘The Base’ is a proscribed terror group which encourages followers to carry out acts of violence in order to ignite a race war.
When officers raided the home he shared with his father in a village in Northumberland on 20 February last year, they found his bedroom was adorned with white supremacist flags.
The court also heard that he had a collection of knives, crossbows and nails for use in a bomb.
‘Shocked and helpless’
Jurors at Leeds Crown Court on Wednesday heard how the boy was dressed in his school uniform when police carried out the raid.
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Detective Sergeant Jonathan Garrad, who was among the officers on the raid, said when they arrested the teen he “put his head in his hands, bent over and shook his head”.
Frida Hussain KC, defending, asked: “He seemed shocked and helpless, didn’t he?”
The officer replied: “That’s what I have written in my statement.”
The Counter Terror Policing North East detective then added he carried out a swift initial search to see if anyone else was in the property, and saw the boy had a full-sized skeleton in his bedroom, as well as a Nazi-type cap.
“We had to go through it very carefully and painstakingly to make sure everything was in order and safe,” he said.
Some people at school ‘should be shot’, teen wrote
Police had also found a series of entries from a diary in which the 15-year-old wrote about how he was bullied at school and hated by female pupils.
The jury heard that in a series of diary entries – starting on 30 January 2023, when the boy was aged 13 – he wrote about pupils at his school.
“I swear to God I just hate my f***ing school,” he wrote. “I want to do horrible things to the people in my school.
“Some of them should be shot.”
On the same page, the boy ranked mass murderers with the neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Breivik topping his list, Leeds Crown Court heard.
The boy wrote that Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 and was subsequently imprisoned for mass murder, was “ultimately the best… he killed the most amount of people to get his point across to people in the world”.
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‘They are feeding into my anger’
Other excerpts from the boy’s journal showed that he wrote he would “try and kill as many people as I can” to take revenge on people.
In an entry on 5 February, he wrote: “I am in a insane fit of anger [sic]. I godamn hate the people who say I’m wrong or who take the piss out of me. I really f***ing hate them.
“They are the reason I am going to try and kill as many people I can. They are feeding into my anger and hatred towards society and degenerates. One day I swear I will take my revenge on all of you f***ers.
“I hate all of you. When I eventually follow through with my plan, I’m blowing all off ya for my [unreadable].”
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The boy denies preparing acts of terrorism, membership of a proscribed terrorist organisation, possession of terrorist documents and dissemination of terrorist documents.
The trial continues.
