Radicalised teenagers who share extreme content without ever leaving their bedrooms pose new terror threat

• Daniel Harris, 19, from Derbyshire, was convicted over videos he posted online

Teenagers who share extremist content online are risking a prison sentence without leaving their bedrooms, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing has said.

Matt Jukes also told the BBC officers were seeing more online hatred spill over into ‘real threats of violence on the streets’.

Under-18s accounted for 14 per cent of all terrorism-related arrests in the UK in the year to March 2023, down from a record 15 per cent in the previous 12 months, Home Office figures show. It marks a significant rise on 2019/20, when it was 5 per cent.

Some 24 people under the age of 18 were arrested for terror-related activity in the year to March 2023, down from 29 in the previous 12 months.

The overall number of terror arrests in the UK has been on a downward path in recent years, dropping from a record 447 in 2017/18 to 169 in 2022/23.

Mr Jukes described the rise in the number of younger terror suspects since 2019 as a ‘really worrying trend’.

He added the trend was a ‘real concern’ and a ‘contagion’, citing the case of Daniel Harris, 19, from Derbyshire, who was convicted over videos he had posted online, which were then shared by a man who carried out an attack in Buffalo, New York.

Teenage extremist Daniel Harris has been sentenced to 11-and-a-half years in jail, and a further 3 years on licence, for five counts of encouraging terrorism and possessing a 3D printer for purposes of terrorism

Payton Gendron killed 10 black people in a racially-motivated mass shooting in May last year

Payton Gendron posted a video in May last year showing him carrying out an attack at Tops supermarket in the US city, leaving 10 dead.

Harris was jailed for 11 years for posting videos promoting racist violence in January.  

Mr Jukes told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘The really remarkable thing is now that literally, you can find yourself with a prison sentence not having left that bedroom, because of encouraging, inciting, sharing information, downloading bomb instructions and encouraging other people to take part in acts of violence.

‘And sadly we’re seeing more of this translate into real threats of violence on the streets.’

He added that counter terrorism officers have seen young people downloading instructions for 3D printed firearms, buying chemicals online and the reconnaissance of potential targets.

Read more: How British neo-Nazi who inspired mass shooting from his grandfather’s bedroom was pulled out of school at age seven and produced a ‘stream of terrorist bile’ while ‘left to his own devices’ spending 14 hours a day online – before being jailed for 11 years

Mr Jukes said: ‘We know that the driving threat here is online but we also can see in our casework that for younger people than ever before, that’s translating into the prospect of them actually carrying out acts of violence.’

‘But it’s one in five of the arrests we make now involve someone under 18, and more of them involving under 25s, so this is a new and emerging threat, which should concern us all and certainly should concern us in respect to the online lives of our communities.’

Islamic State fanatic Matthew King was jailed for life earlier this year with a minimum term of six years for plotting a terror attack on British police officers or soldiers, after he was filmed scoping out a police and train station.

King, from Wickford in Essex, had pleaded guilty to preparation of terrorist acts between December 22, 2021 and May 17, 2022.

The 19-year-old carried out surveillance at police stations, railway stations, a magistrates’ court and a British Army barracks, and was just one day away from embarking on a terror attack when he was arrested by police last year.

In mitigation, his barrister Hossein Zahir KC said King was ‘immature’ and the prospect he would have carried out a terror attack in the UK or travelled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State was ‘remote’.

Matthew King, 19, who converted to Islam during the COVID-19 lockdown, became quickly radicalised by watching extremist material on the internet

But Judge Mark Lucraft KC told the 19-year-old he poses a risk to the public, and revealed a phone call made by King to his mother after being arrested in which he claimed to have done ‘nothing wrong’.

King, who converted to Islam during the COVID-19 lockdown, became quickly radicalised by watching extremist material on the internet. 

A student who planned a bomb attack on a police station to ignite a race war was also jailed for four years last month. 

Luke Skelton, 20, a far-right extremist, wrote the ‘Reactionary British Manifesto’, which he planned to release after carrying out the attack, a court heard.

The teenager wrote down recipes for bomb-making and travelled to Newcastle City Centre to take surveillance pictures of a police station in September 2021.

The court heard he had researched how to make napalm and dynamite and written notes on his mobile phone about constructing a homemade bomb.

Luke Skelton, 20, a far-right extremist, wrote the ‘Reactionary British Manifesto’

The court heard Skelton downloaded propaganda material on his phone from an extreme right-wing group. He was arrested by counter-terrorist police in June 2021 and told they were taking no further action, but in October he was arrested again and charged.

In one online message he wrote about becoming ‘the great man of history.’

He said he wanted to ‘accelerate the coming collapse and racial war’ adding: ‘Parliament will be responsible for the number of dead in the thousands.’

Streatham terrorist Sudesh Amman, 20, yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he stabbed two innocent people during a 62-second rampage in South London before he was shot dead by armed police. 

Amman, raised in Coventry and Birmingham before moving to Harrow in North-West London, had grabbed a knife from the display in the Low Price hardware store while wearing a fake suicide belt before stabbing two passersby – both of whom survived – in the attack on February 2, 2020. 

Sudesh Amman yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he stabbed two innocent people during a 62-second rampage in South London

Source: Read Full Article