No evidence of ‘leak’ in far-right terror investigation
Counter-terrorism officers say there is no evidence to support claims that confidential information about operations is being leaked to members of extreme far-right organisations.
They spoke out ahead of the sentencing of a 17-year-old contributor to the online neo-Nazi network Fascist Forge, who began deleting files ahead of a police raid after writing in his diary a friend had tipped him off that he was about to be searched.
The teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was found guilty of planning a terror attack between October 2017 and March 2019 after a trial at Manchester Crown Court.
He was also convicted of disseminating a terrorist publication, possessing an article for a purpose connected with terrorism and three counts of possessing a document or record containing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.
He will be sentenced tomorrow (January 7).
The trial heard that he identified targets in Durham, including schools, pubs, council buildings and post offices, in a hand-written manifesto. He planned to carry out arson attacks with Molotov cocktails on local synagogues and praised Adolf Hitler in a diary entry as “a brave man to say the least”.
He began deleting files from his digital devices on February 14, a month before he was arrested in County Durham.
During the raid on March 13, officers seized handwritten documents and far-right literature from his bedroom and analysis of his computer devices and mobile phone revealed internet searches on firearms, explosives and knives.
The suggestion that he had received a tip-off about the raid was made during his initial appearance at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last April, prompting chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot to ask police to “investigate further”.
A spokesperson for Counter Terrorism Policing North East said the claim was investigated but no evidence was found to support it.
“In his diary entry it mentions that a friend has tipped him off about his online activity and he’s going to start deleting things,” they said. “All this was investigated, including phone records. Although there is evidence he did delete a number of files around February 14, there’s no actual evidence to support the fact he was tipped off or implicating a third party. All the files deleted at that time were recovered.”
