Alan Edward, a would-be terrorist with an ‘armoury’ of weapons including a crossbow and 14 knives, has been jailed for 10 years for planning an attack on gay and trans people.
Jurors heard that Edward, who amassed a collection of weaponry at his home in Stirlingshire, was a Holocaust denier who glorified Hitler. He also had a Samurai sword, knuckledusters, baton and stun gun stashed at his home alongside with Nazi and SS insignia.
Police also found an air pistol, an SS-style skull mask, fighting gloves with specially-hardened knuckles, pellets and ball bearings.
Prosecutors said Edward was ‘a man with clear neo-Nazi ideals… preparing for an act of terrorism’ which would include ‘an ideologically-driven incident of serious violence’.
Judge Fiona Tait at the High Court in Glasgow told Edward that he ‘publicly and extensively posted views of an extreme right-wing nature’ and was found ‘in possession of numerous items’ in circumstances that gave rise to suspicion it could be linked to a terrorist act.
Judge Tait added: ‘The author of the risk assessment on you assesses you at high risk of re-offending.
‘For such serious offences there is no appropriate alternative to a prison sentence.
‘It is necessary to punish you and deter you and others from engaging in activities for the purposes of terrorism and to protect the public from you.’
Jurors heard Edward was said to have ‘notions of white supremacy, racial purity of whites, racism, anti-Semitism and hatred of homosexuals and trans people’.
Checks on his WhatsApp account revealed he had been messaging an associate in nearby Grangemouth – identified as ‘Pello’ – about a proposed attack on the LGBTQ+ group, which met in Falkirk.
He’d used bigoted language in a series of texts expressing his desire to kill members of the transgender and Jewish communities with the messages described as ‘incredibly sinister’.
Edward remarked of the LGBTQ+ group: ‘They have been pushing their luck for years. Now they will pay in blood.’
He added: ‘We should get masked up and go do a few of them in at their little club.’
