Schoolboy ‘neo-Nazi’ stuffed with ‘hate and racism’ collected a stash of weapons together with a shotgun and explosives to assault synagogue, court docket hears

A schoolboy ‘filled with hate and racism’ joined a banned neo-Nazi group and collected a stash of weapons including a shotgun and explosives as he prepared a far-right attack on a synagogue, a court heard today.

The 16-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, also kept a diary in which he expressed his desire to launch a terrorist attack against black people and homosexuals, Leeds Crown Court was told.

He went on to research a synagogue in Newcastle as a potential target and joined a ‘neo-Nazi paramilitary hate’ group called The Base which encourages followers to carry out acts of violence in order to ignite a race war, it is alleged.

When officers raided the cottage he shared with his father in a remote village in Northumberland on February 20 last year they found his bedroom was adorned with white supremacist flags and he had a collection of knives, crossbows and nails for use in a bomb.

‘In short they found an arsenal, one worthy of any young right-wing terrorist,’ Michelle Heeley KC, prosecuting, told the jury on the first day of the teenager’s trial. 

Opening the case, she said: ‘The defendant in this case is 16 years old, and he wanted to be a terrorist.

‘He believed in a race war, in white supremacy and he planned to carry out acts of terrorism in furtherance of his beliefs.

‘He became a member of a right-wing terrorist group and shared his beliefs with others.’

She added that the boy, who spent a lot of time online, had a ‘hatred of Jews, of black people, of anyone who didn’t conform to his racial ideals.’

The teenager denies preparing acts of terrorism, membership of a proscribed terrorist organisation, possession of terrorist documents and dissemination of terrorist documents. 

The schoolboy is currently on trial at Leeds Crown Crown accused of preparing acts of terrorism and dissemination of terrorist documents

The court was told that police found that he had plastered recruitment stickers across his village stating: ‘The Base – learn, train, fight. Survivalism and self-defence network.’

In his diary on January 30 2023, shortly after he turned 13, the boy allegedly wrote a list ranking white supremacist killers, placing Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway, at the top of the list.

He said: ‘Ultimately the best. He killed the most amount of people to get his point across to people in the world.’

Four months later, in May 2023 he started to sketch out plans for bombs and weapons, annotating the notes with swastikas, the court was told.

Ms Heeley said matters ‘became more serious’ in June when he started to actively experiment with making weapons and shared images of his knife collection and military equipment and memorabilia including military body armour and a Nazi officer’s cap.

The plans became ‘more concrete’ by August 14, when the boy wrote: ‘I don’t want to survive this. 

‘I think the main reason I’m targeting the police and government is that they are the reason white people are killed, raped and discriminated against by the invaders, the reason for this is to inspire others in countries as restrictive as mine and also to start a race war.’

The same month he purchased a crossbow and practised using it.

‘Preparations have taken a step up. These are not just words anymore they have become actions,’ Ms Heeley said.

On December 1 2024, the youth also put up recruitment stickers on lamp posts across his village and wrote to another user: ‘I have always admired Hitler but only in the last two years have I become NS,’ a reference to national socialism, the ideology of the Nazis.

On December 22, he used the Amazon website to purchase purchased potassium nitrate powder and watched a video on how to make black powder explosives.

On Christmas Eve ‘instead of Christmas films’ he watched videos showing the loading and firing of a homemade black powder rifle, and a video of a mass stabbing by Arda Kucukyetim in Turkey in August 2024, along with videos of school shootings, Ms Heeley said.

On December 29, a few weeks after turning 15, he researched Brenton Tarrant, who shot dead 51 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch New Zealand.

‘Immediately after researching a man who had attacked a place of worship, this defendant researched local synagogues,’ including the Newcastle Reform Synagogue, Ms Heeley said.

On New Year’s Eve, he looked for homemade .22 ammunition and a 3D printed firearm known as an FGC-9.

‘The nature of the searches tells you everything you need to know – the prosecution case is that he was gathering weapons and identifying targets,’ she said.

‘He was preparing for acts of terrorism.’

Ms Heeley added: ‘This was a young man obsessed with white power and he collected information to help him carry out his plans for an attack.

‘This was a young man actively preparing for a terrorist act and had the police not got there in time who knows what he may have done.

‘We will point to the multiple times the defendant referred to taking part in action in real life, how he professed support for white supremacists and stated how he hated blacks and Jews, the research of synagogues.

‘These were not empty words, these were the words of a teenage boy filled with hate and racism, a boy who was planning to channel his anger into committing an act of terrorism, who idolised those who had carried out such atrocities previously.’

The trial continues.