A schoolboy who idolised the Nazis and Adolf Hitler from childhood has been found guilty of terrorism offences.
The 16-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, posed in a Nazi cap and wearing a moustache resembling Hitler’s when he was just nine and by 15 had amassed an arsenal of weapons at the remote cottage he shared with his geologist father in Northumberland.
After he joined a proscribed neo-Nazi group online, the property was raided by counter-terror police on February 20 last year and officers found a crossbow, five knives, two military tactical vests, military webbing, military helmets, two skull masks and a German camouflaged military jacket in the boy’s bedroom.
The room was also decorated with white supremacist paraphernalia including a flag of Rhodesia and a Nazi SS officer's cap.
An air shotgun hanging on the wall had the words 'natural selection' and 'George Floyd' scrawled on the barrel, in reference to the black man murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.
When the boy’s devices were analysed, a video on his laptop showed a male wearing a skull mask, hat and goggles and holding a rifle.
At his trial at Leeds Crown Court, prosecutors said the teenager was filled with ‘hate and racism’.
This led him to join ‘neo-Nazi paramilitary hate group’ The Base which encouraged its followers to ignite a race war, the court heard.
He was also said to have researched a synagogue in Newcastle as the potential target of a far-right terror attack.
However giving evidence, the boy, who was often emotional and had to take regular breaks, told jurors that he was only playing a ‘character’ online because he was bullied at school and wanted to ‘fit in’ with others sharing incendiary material.
He said he had an interest in history and the military from a young age and would 'play at being a soldier' and later began to collect 'military memorabilia.'
The teenager, now 16, has been convicted of possessing and sharing terrorist documents relating to banned neo-Nazi group 'The Base'
A video downloaded from the boy's laptop showed a figure holding a rifle and wearing a skeleton mask
Earlier this month, he was unanimously convicted of membership of a proscribed terrorist organisation as well as possessing and sharing terrorist documents.
This related to the boy placing posters around a Northumberland town saying: ‘Save your race, join The Base.’
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the most serious charge of preparing acts of terrorism.
At a hearing today, the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed it would not be seeking a retrial and lifted reporting restrictions which had prevented reporting of his convictions.
The boy, who attended the hearing via video-link, will be sentenced next month.
The youth’s trial heard he had become ‘obsessed’ with mass killers and had downloaded a list of the equipment used by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.
Opening the case to the jury, prosecutor Michelle Heeley KC said: 'He believed in a race war, in white supremacy and he planned to carry out acts of terrorism in furtherance of his beliefs.'
Jurors were shown a diary belonging to the teen in which he described how he was bullied at school and hated by female pupils.
In one entry, written on January 30 2023, when he was aged 13, the boy wrote: 'I swear to God I hate my f**king school.
'I want to do horrible things to the people in my school. They are just stupid, loud and just overall obnoxious npcs [non-playing characters]. Some of them should be shot.'
He went on to list a 'Mass Murder Ranking' topped by Anders Breivik who killed 77 people in Norway, writing: 'Ultimately he the best he killed the most amount of people to get his point across to people in the world.'
Jurors were shown images taken by police of the boy's bedroom, where weapons and far-right memorabilia were on display
A Nazi SS officer's cap was found in the boy's bedroom, described as his 'sanctuary' and shown to the court
Second on the list were Columbine High School shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who killed 14 people.
The court heard the teen never watched television and instead spent his time after school in the ‘sanctuary’ of his bedroom on the internet, watching YouTube videos and playing a computer game called Counter-Strike, in which players can pretend to be terrorists.
But describing his online conversations, the teenager told the jury he was simply engaging in online roleplay.
‘I felt like I was getting addicted a bit,’ he said. ‘It didn’t feel like real life, it was a completely different world. I didn't really know how to stop. It felt exciting.’
The trial heard that the boy’s hatred escalated rapidly and he was in conversations on the encrypted Telegram messaging app with a Russian claiming to be the leader of The Base.
He would film himself making Nazi salutes, firing a crossbow purchased for him by his mother and told the Russian user that he hated ‘keyboard warriors’ and wanted to see real action in the hope of returning to a ‘small, agricultural’ society ‘with traditional values of race and family.’
Speaking to the Daily Mail, one neighbour in the schoolboy’s rural village, where shooting and outdoor pursuits are commonplace, said there were few young people in the area and talking online would have provided the youth with an escape.
‘You can see how the situation might have developed purely because of the area we live in,’ he said.
‘I can see kids in their bedrooms being led on because there is nothing else to do. Was he getting carried away like you might do in a game, when you are shooting the world up?’
