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A teenage boy alleged to hate Jews and black people gathered weapons and researched local synagogues as he prepared to commit acts of terrorism, a jury has heard.
The boy, now 16, from Northumberland, was proud of holding Nazi beliefs and became a member of a banned terror group which had the goal of creating a “white supremacist utopia”, prosecutors said.
The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has denied charges of preparing terrorist acts, being a member of a proscribed organisation, possession of terror documents and sharing terror publications.
Michelle Heeley KC, prosecuting at Leeds crown court, said on Tuesday that the defendant “wanted to be a terrorist”.
She said police had raided the boy’s home in February last year. “They found weapons. They found explosives and switches, white supremacist flags, knives, crossbows and nails, ideal for a nailbomb. In short they found an arsenal, an arsenal worthy of any young rightwing terrorist.”
They found notepads expressing racist beliefs, jurors heard. Heeley said the boy was likely to say that anything he wrote down were empty words but the prosecution would point to his “active research” and the collection of weapons and material to create explosives.
“These were more than words,” she said. “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.”
The jury was told that the boy spent a lot of time online. Most of the evidence, Heeley said, would come from what police found when they raided his home – including weapons, explosives, military clothing, notepads, his phone and computers.
The evidence, Heeley said, suggested that the boy had “a belief in white supremacy, that white people are the superior race, and all other races are inferior … a hatred of Jews, of black people, of anyone who didn’t conform to his racial ideals”.
Heeley said the boy was 13 when he reached out to a neo-Nazi paramilitary hate group called the Base, an organisation proscribed by the UK government.
“They encourage murder and acts of terrorism and want to bring about the collapse of society through a race war,” Heeley said. The end goal is “a white supremacist utopia arising from the destruction”.
The court heard that the boy said he wanted to be “part of an active group, active in real life”. He said, the jury heard, that he was “willing to travel when needed”.
On the Christmas Eve before his arrest, instead of watching festive films, Heeley said, he watched “videos of mass stabbings, school shootings, terrorist acts”.
He began researching local synagogues, Heeley said. “The prosecution case is that he was gathering weapons and identifying targets.”
On New Year’s Eve, he was researching how to make homemade ammunition and printable guns, jurors heard.
Heeley described the teenager’s “obsession” with extremism and how he collected videos of terror attacks and ranked killers who had carried out atrocities against minorities.
He bought chemicals online with a view to making explosives and discussed blowing up an electricity substation or a mobile phone mast near his home, the court heard.
The trial continues.
