A NEO-Nazi who wanted to wage war on the LGBT+ community was yesterday facing a lengthy jail sentence after being convicted of sickening terrorism offences.
Alan Edward, a former journalist who glorified Hitler, had discussed an attack on the gay community, a jury heard.
Edward, 54, who had nearly 28,000 followers on social media, denied the Holocaust, mocked the murder of George Floyd, invited support for a proscribed far-right terrorist group, and told his on-line disciples, “the quickest way to someone’s heart is with a high power 7.62mm round”.
A document found on his computer referred to Norwegian neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Breivik as “Saint Anders”.
The High Court in Stirling heard that Edward possessed and expressed “a set of ideals with a neo-Nazi outlook, incorporating notions of white supremacy, the notion of racial purity of whites, racism, antisemitism, and hatred of homosexuals and transgender people”.
He was arrested after armed police surrounded his end-terrace two-storey home in Redding, Falkirk, before dawn in September 2022 and broke down his front door.
They found weapons and equipment including a crossbow with telescopic sights, 14 knives, some with Nazi and SS insignia, machetes, a tomahawk, a Samurai sword, knuckledusters, a catapult, an extendable baton and a stun gun.
They also found an air pistol modeled on the “James Bond” Walther PPK, an SS-style skull mask, goggles and a respirator, fighting gloves with specially-hardened knuckles, pellets, ball bearings, and huntingtips for crossbow arrows.
Prosecutors said this amounted to “an armoury”.
Edward also had an indoor cannabis plantation he was growing to sell.
Checks on his WhatsApp account found he had been messaging an associate in nearby Grangemouth – identified only as “Pello” – about the proposed attack on the LBGT group, which met in Falkirk.
In a series of exchanges described by the prosecution as “incredibly sinister”, he told “Pello”: “It’s clearly time to hunt the f*****s down and beat them.
“They have been pushing their luck for years, now they will pay in blood.
“It’s time to kill [the] t****y, there is no place for them in this world.
“I hate them all I really do.
“Hunting time is nearly here, yayyy.
“We should get masked up and go do a few of them in at their little gay club.”
Other messages read, “Communists belong in wood chippers” and “Time to fire up the ovens and step on the gas“.
Another message read, “Jews are behind it all. We will… send Satan’s filthy K***s back to hell where they belong”.
The court heard that Edward had two accounts on the social media platform Gab, popular with extremists because it is known to be loosely-moderated.
He came to the attention of counter-terrorism investigators after posting a video glorifying a banned far right group called National Action.
The video was of a rally held in Darlington, England in 2016, shortly before National Action became the first far-right group to be proscribed in the UK under the Terrorism Act.
Shown in court, the video features demonstrators dressed in black and carrying flags bearing the Nazi “Black Sun” logo and making Nazi salutes to the chant “Hail Victory”.
At the same time, a man shouts down a megaphone, “This used to be a white country – white men, white women, white children, white families, white culture, white values.
“We had white ideals… the time is here for National Socialists to stand up for the land we love“.
Jurors were told that Edward had posted the video on June 19th, 2022, deliberately choosing the date because it is an annual federal holiday in the US, celebrating the ending of slavery.
The video also featured the antisemitic slur that “the Briton has been trampled underfoot by hook-nosed bankers”.
A jury found Stirling-born Edward, of 29 Wholequarter Avenue, Redding, Falkirk, guilty of four charges under the Terrorism Act — inviting support for a proscribed organisation; possession of weaponry, ammunition, and equipment for the commission, preparation, or instigation of terrorist acts; and encouraging terrorism and circulating terrorist publications.
He was also found guilty of racism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and statutory breach of the peace.
All these offences he denied.
He was further found guilty of producing and supplying cannabis and possessing the stun gun – which he had offered to admit before the trial began.
During an 11-day trial, Police Scotland counter terrorism officer Detective Sergeant Campbell Flockhart said several posts by Edward on Gab highlighted violence against white people by black people.
Others included memes about Floyd, who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020.
The day after Floyd’s murder, one of Edward’s accounts carried a meme of a Pepe The Frog cartoon character in police uniform kneeling on the neck of a black man by the rear bumper of a Minneapolis squad car.
The court has heard that the green frog image has been used by the far right.
Other posts referred to someone as “a black animal” and “a n***o savage”, and called gay people “plague carriers”, suggesting they were responsible for spreading monkeypox.
Antisemitic posts included an image of a red devil with a forked tail holding a spear shaped like a Jewish menorah and others claiming “Every aspect of Covid is Jewish”, and suggesting the Jews “instigated World War II”.
An anti-transgender post read: “We used to sterilise mental defectives. We now just convince them they’re trans so they ASK to be sterilised”.
Detective Sergeant Flockhart, 47, headed the raid on Edward’s lair and interviewed him at Falkirk Police Station afterwards.
Later in jail Edward told an associate on the phone to “write down” the name Flockhart, adding: “I’m gonna f*****g gut that pig”.
In evidence, Edward claimed that he had his weaponry only as a collector, and for “outdoor pursuits”.
He claimed that a Black Sun ring he was found wearing when he was arrested — said by an expert to be a symbol of the far right — was “actually an esoteric symbol that represents life force”.
Asked whether he was serious when he posted “kill t******s”, he replied: “With an 80 per cent suicide rate, why bother?”
He showed no emotion whatsoever when the verdicts were announced.
Judge Fiona Tait deferred sentence until October 21st at the High Court in Edinburgh and continued Edward’s remand in custody in the meantime.
She also called for an assessment for a Serious Crime Prevention Order — SCPOs are designed to ensure the “lifetime management” of criminals, including their business dealings, communications, and movements once they are released from jail.
She thanked jurors for the “care” they had taken.
Prosecutor Paul Kearney KC, the advocate depute, said Edward was “a man who with clear neo-Nazi ideals… preparing for an act of terrorism which would include an ideologically-driven incident of serious violence”.