Teenage neo-Nazi from Cornwall is UK's youngest terror offender

The teenager admitted 12 terrorism offences and is due to be sentenced at the Old Bailey

The teenage leader of a neo-Nazi group has become the youngest person in the UK to have committed a terrorist offence.

The boy from Cornwall had admitted 12 offences, two of dissemination of terrorist documents and 10 of possession of terrorist material.

At 13 years old he downloaded his first bombmaking manual and later that year joined online forum Fascist Forge.

The sentencing hearing of the now 16 year old will continue on 8 February.

The court heard he was the leader of the British version of a now banned neo-Nazi terrorist organisation.

Between 2018 and July 2019, he collected a significant amount of far right material and expressed racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic views on online platforms.

He talked about "gassing" Jewish people, hanging gay people and wanting to "shoot up their parades".

Prosecuting, Naomi Parsons, said his home, where he lived with his grandmother, was searched and police found a Nazi flag and racist slogan on the garden shed, as well as several manuals about making weapons and instructions on how to kill people on his phone and computer.

"The age is the alarming factor and his conduct betrays a maturity beyond his chronological age," she added.

'White jihad'

The teenager, who cannot be identified, was in touch with an Estonian boy, who founded a now-banned group called Feuerkrieg Division.

They used encrypted messages to discuss their hatred of particular groups.

The defendant then set up FKD GB and recruited British members from online platforms, such as Paul Dunleavy, a teenager from Rugby, who was jailed last year for preparing a terrorist attack.

The group wanted to enact "white jihad" and the genocide of non-white people, the court heard.

In mitigation Deni Matthews said the defendant had a "simply dreadful childhood" and that everything he did was in order to "seek approval" from others online.