Reuters — A British teenager went on trial on Tuesday, accused of being a member of a banned white supremacist group, planning terrorist acts, carrying out research on nearby synagogues, and collecting weapons and material to make explosives.
The boy, now 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons, downloaded and shared videos of attacks, shootings and beheadings, expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler, and kept notebooks where he wrote of his hatred for Jews and black people, prosecutor Michelle Heeley said.
When police raided the home he shared with his father in a remote village in northern England, they found knives, crossbows, military clothing and evidence that he was actively planning to turn his anger into action, Heeley said.
“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,” she said.
The boy denies the charges of preparing acts of terrorism, being a member of a proscribed group, possessing terrorist documents and disseminating terrorist publications.
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The prosecutor told Leeds Crown Court that from the age of 13 the boy had demonstrated his extremist obsession, saying his notebooks showed how he had esteemed white supremacist killers and glorified their actions.
British police near the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Crumpsall, north Manchester, on October 2, 2025, following a terror attack targeting the synagogue during Yom Kippur services. (Oli Scarff/AFP)
Messages on his computer showed he had contacted The Base, a banned far-right organization, and showed his support by putting up its posters around his village, Heeley said.
He had researched local synagogues as part of identifying targets, and downloaded material on making weapons and explosives, she added.
“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 idolized those who had carried out such atrocities previously,” Heeley said.
The trial is taking place some three months after two people were killed in a Yom Kippur terror attack at a Manchester synagogue. In December, two men were found guilty of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community in England, and a third man was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism linked to that plot.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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