SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On Sentencing, Lord Arthurson said:

"On 11 July 2025 at Glasgow High Court, pleas of guilty were tendered on your behalf in respect of a two charge section 76 indictment, these charges libelling respectively a contravention of the Terrorism Act 2006 section 5(1)(a) and a contravention of the Terrorism Act 2000 section 58(1)(b).

"You are a young person currently aged 17.  At the time of the offending before the court you were aged 16.  The Sentencing Young People Guideline is accordingly engaged in this case. You have no previous convictions.

"A detailed agreed narrative of the facts was read into the record on the date of your guilty pleas.  A criminal justice social work report and risk assessment are also now available.  In the narrative it is recorded that you were attracted to holocaust denial and developed sympathies with the Nazi Party.  In the criminal justice social work report, which was prepared of course after the tendering by you in court of your pleas of guilty, it is notable that even now you continue to describe yourself as a Nazi.

"You appear, looking at the material before the court as a whole, to have become radicalised online, this process having commenced when you were aged only 13.  You have viewed graphic depictions of extreme violence, including footage taken by mass shooters in the USA and elsewhere.  You started to write a “manifesto” from November 2022.  This document was never completed.  This material contains hate‑filled rants about Muslim and Jewish people, which I will not repeat.  In one entry in late September 2024 you identify yourself as “the sole culprit of the recent attempt mass shooting/bombing in Glasgow when this is public if all go’s to plan I’m 17 and under psychiatric analysis getting help or dead”.  You were of course 16 when you wrote this entry.  Your manifesto disclosed that you had begun to formulate plans to carry out your own terrorist attack.  An initial potential target was a High School.  On 20 December 2024 you filmed yourself walking through the corridors of that school stating off camera that “stage one” of your plan involved “liquidating” one of the school offices.  Other videos include footage of you walking through school corridors describing what you intended to do and the enjoyment you would take from watching what would unfold.

In mid‑December 2024 you began to formulate plans and to prepare for an attack on the Inverclyde Muslim Centre in Greenock.  These plans involved the use by you of aerosols and lighters to set fire to the premises.  You collected weapons and obtained substances to manufacture explosives.  You infiltrated the Centre and took videos showing the layout of the building.  You collected images and maps of the Centre and drew a map of its interior.  You joined a messaging group made up of members from the Centre and attended there, taking part in prayers with the congregation in order to learn the layout of the premises and who attended the Centre.  From 10 January 2025 you communicated regarding your plans with another individual online.  You discussed the benefits of reconnaissance and stated that you had “infiltrated the place”.  You told that person that you would use a deodorant can and a lighter to start a fire and that you would use an imitation firearm, which people would believe was real, to prevent them from leaving the burning building.  You asked that person to share a livestream of your attack on the Centre, specifically requesting that a livestream of you burning down a mosque be shared along with your manifesto.  From 21 January 2025 you became agitated and anxious to carry out your attack.

At around 1.10am on 23 January 2025 you told another person online that you intended to carry out your attack “tomorrow”.  You would not be dissuaded from this and stated that the mosque would be at its fullest at 1.00pm.  You referred to “the minute I start burning them”.  You also prepared a final, shorter version of your “manifesto”, stating that “I am hateful and want to kill that is my soul motive in life and it’s what I intend doing even if it costs me my life”.  You stated: “tomorrow I will burn that fucking mosque to the ground”.

You left home at 6.00am, telling your friends at 7.20am that “Today I choose what my life was and will be”.  You attended at the Centre in possession of the items I will mention shortly, all with the intention of setting fire to the premises and killing any persons therein.  At 9am you attempted to enter the Centre.  You were observed by police officers to be dressed in black clothing and carrying a camouflage military‑style rucksack, from which officers following your arrest recovered an imitation firearm, four cans of aerosol spray and notebooks containing writing, sketches and symbols including swastikas.  On arrest you dropped a lighter between parked cars which you confirmed you had been carrying.  Your home was searched and weapons, ingredients for explosive substances and masks were recovered, along with a copy of “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler.

Your mobile telephone was recovered.  It contained the two documents referred to in charge two, namely “The Anarchist Cookbook” and “Improvised Primary Explosives”.

In this case the Crown has made available to the court an expert report. I have considered it carefully. I do not propose to rehearse the full terms of this lengthy document, but note from it the following points. Your “manifesto” should be understood as a public declaration of intent. The terms of that document, to which the Crown expert had access, contain clear similarities, in terms of components and content, to certain notorious terrorists who proceeded to implement their own manifestos in the commission of terrorist acts. The narrative and underlying message of your own “manifesto” can properly be considered to be an extreme right wing terrorist manifesto. The expert gives this opinion in conclusion: “It also cites the attack-intended to take place the day after the manifesto was written-and in parts, is written in the past tense suggesting that the manifesto was intended to be read after the attack had taken place. None of this can be explained as mere chance or coincidence: far from it. This document….can only be understood to be a manifesto.”

The criminal justice social work report and risk assessment contain deeply troubling content. You stated to the authors that you take full responsibility for your offending, but appear to them to have minimised the seriousness of that offending, albeit that you did demonstrate some remorse in respect of the manager of the Centre. You discussed with the authors your admiration for certain notorious perpetrators of massacres; that you agree with their thinking; and that you wanted to be known publicly like them. The authors refer additionally to certain adverse childhood experiences and to your diagnosis at the age of five in respect of autism spectrum disorder. They report that you have no wish to change your views. You have been assessed as presenting a high risk of serious harm. There are no current identifiable factors that would interrupt an episode of such harmful behaviour. Your extremist views are not limited to the Islamic community. As such, the authors conclude, it is impossible to predict who is at risk from you. The authors advise that without significant monitoring and risk management strategies you are very likely to reoffend in a similar manner, not only to cause harm, but also to gain notoriety.

The authors expressly address the sentencing option of an Order for Lifelong Restriction, which would require the making by the court of a risk assessment order. This is an option that I have myself considered very carefully. Their recommendation is that, due to your young age and lack of maturity, it cannot be said at this stage that you lack the capacity to change, and that accordingly other sentencing options can be considered in your case. With some hesitation I confirm that I am, on balance, inclined to agree with that recommendation.

I have further listened with great care to the cogent and powerful submissions in mitigation advanced this morning on your behalf by your senior counsel. I note in particular what has been said by him regarding the engagement of the Sentencing Young People Guideline in this case, having regard not just to your young age but also your particular lack of maturity; your wholesale importation of the views of others via the internet; your isolation and wish to make yourself significant in a world which seemed to you to be passing you by; your lack of stability in your home life; your agreement to take part in the Prevent programme and your forthcoming assessment by IVY at the Kibble Centre; your acceptance that the punishment which will be required in this case must necessarily be severe; and the undoubted utility of your guilty pleas in this matter.

In the whole circumstances of this particularly anxious case, I conclude that it is plain that the only appropriate disposal must be a very significant custodial one, having regard to the critical sentencing considerations which arise acutely in a case of this nature and gravity, namely deterrence and punishment. Thoroughly radicalised, and by the time of your offending a committed Nazi, you infiltrated the Inverclyde Muslim Centre in the ways already described. You engaged in detailed planning and preparatory conduct, all with the intention of committing acts of terrorism against the Islamic community based at the Centre. You intended to burn down the building when it was at its busiest and thereby to kill any persons inside. What you had in mind was what can properly be characterised as a quite diabolical atrocity involving extreme violence and multiple deaths. You even requested that your attack be livestreamed. Your conduct was only stopped by your arrest, when you were quite literally at the very door of the Centre.

On the basis of the agreed facts in this case, and indeed the whole material available to the court, it further appears to me that the normal period of licence would not be adequate to protect the public from serious harm from you when you are in due course released into the community. You will accordingly today be made the subject of an extended sentence, which sentence will be in two parts. The first part will be custodial. The second part will take the form of an extension period, when you will be under supervision while on licence in the community. The conditions of that licence will be set by Scottish Ministers. If you fail to comply with these licence conditions during the extension period your licence will be revoked and you may be returned to custody for a further period in respect of this indictment. The court also has the power to deal with you if you commit a further offence after your release from the custodial part of this sentence and while you are on licence.

Turning to the terms of the court’s disposal today, I now sentence you on this indictment as follows. On charge one you will serve an extended sentence of 18 years duration, with a custodial part of 10 years and an extension period of 8 years. This sentence will be backdated to 23 January 2025, being the initial date of your remand into custody in these proceedings. Having regard to the relevant English Sentencing Council Guideline as a non-determinative but helpful cross-check in this sentencing exercise, I assess your culpability at level B and locate the level of harm towards the top of category 2, on one view perhaps even on the cusp of category 1. Statutory aggravating factors are reflected in the libelled aggravations to charge one as expressed in terms of section 1 of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 in respect of religious and racial prejudice respectively. Your possession of and repeated accessing of extremist material, and what appears to be your communication with at least one other online, constitute in my view non-statutory aggravating factors. Mitigating factors include your status as a first offender and your young age and lack of maturity. I additionally refer to your long-established ASD diagnosis. I accordingly select a headline custodial tariff for charge one of 17 years. Within that period I apportion 1 year for each of the statutory aggravations libelled in the charge. Taking into account the timing and utility of your guilty plea I reduce that headline figure to a period of 13 years. Taking further into account your age and lack of maturity at the time of this offending and your age today at the date of sentencing, which I have of course already had regard to in respect of my decision to draw back from the making of a risk assessment order in this case, I reduce that latter figure further to a final custodial term figure of 10 years. The extension period in your case will, in my opinion, require to be considerable, and the management of your licence during that period stringent and robust. I accordingly select an extension period figure of 8 years. This extension period will serve, it is very much to be hoped, to facilitate your successful rehabilitation into the community in due course. For the avoidance of doubt, the sentencing objective encompassed in this vital component of today’s disposal is your effective rehabilitation.

In respect of charge two, taking a broad approach to the whole picture of your offending in this case, and having regard to the important sentencing principle of totality, I impose a concurrent, and similarly backdated, determinate sentence of detention of 3 years, duly discounted from a headline period of 4 years.

Finally, standing the terms of today’s sentencing, I confirm that the notification requirements contained in part 4 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 will attach to this disposal by way of automatic application for a period of 10 years."