British teen behind neo-Nazi, anti-Muslim group pleads guilty

A memorial to the victim of the Finsbury Park Mosque attack, Finsbury Park, North London, Britain, June 19, 2017. (Reuters)
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Updated 30 March 2021
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British teen behind neo-Nazi, anti-Muslim group pleads guilty

  • Schoolboy nicknamed himself ‘Hitler,’ praised deadly 2017 London mosque attack
  • Pleaded guilty to four counts of inviting support for National Action, the British neo-Nazi organization that was banned in 2016

LONDON: A British schoolboy who created an online neo-Nazi group to target Muslims and other minority groups has been sentenced after admitting to terror offenses in court.

The 16-year-old, hailing from Newcastle in Britain’s northeast, nicknamed himself “Hitler” and used social media to promote Islamophobia, extreme right-wing violence and racism.

His manifesto outlined the group’s aims, including transforming the UK into a white ethno-state. Using the “Hitler” alias, he also designed and spread vicious anti-Muslim propaganda.

He pleaded guilty to four counts of inviting support for National Action, the British neo-Nazi organization that was banned by the government in 2016. After his case was heard in a youth court, he was handed a 12-month intensive referral order.

He also admitted to three counts of encouraging terrorism, and four of stirring up racial and religious hatred. As part of his sentencing, he must notify authorities of his location and activities for 10 years.

The boy committed his first terrorism offense aged just 15. After continuing racist activity online, he was first arrested in 2019.

Using the social media platform Gab, he glorified the far-right killer behind the deadly Finsbury Park Mosque attack in June 2017 that killed one Muslim worshipper and injured 10.

The teenager, who is diagnosed with autism, is said in a pre-sentence report to have “only an approximate understanding of the words and concepts deployed.” The report added: “It is likely that he did not see the wider ramifications of his activities.”


French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading

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French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading

  • Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years

PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.