A teenager who listed Hitler, Mussolini and the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as his inspirations and who planned a terrorist attack on a mosque has been sentenced to 10 years in custody.
The 17-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, had intended to set fire to an Islamic centre in Greenock, Inverclyde, after befriending the imam and mapping out the building’s interior on his phone.
The teenager was arrested at the door of the centre in January this year. He was carrying a military-style rucksack that contained a German-manufactured Glock-type air pistol, ammunition, ball bearings, gas cartridges and aerosol cans, according to prosecutors.
He was sentenced at the high court in Glasgow on Thursday after pleading guilty to two terrorism charges, with a further eight years of supervision on licence upon release.
In his sentencing statement, Lord Arthurson said: “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.”
Prosecutors said the teenager, who became radicalised online, began plotting the attack in December 2024 and joined the mosque’s WhatsApp group saying he was “looking for guidance”, later winning the trust of the imam during several visits.
Meanwhile he was boasting of his plans to set the centre on fire on the social media platform Telegram and later filmed himself wandering the corridors, including footage showing him superimposing a hand carrying a semi-automatic pistol.
Sineidin Corrins, deputy procurator fiscal for specialist casework at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, said: “This heinous plan to attack those within his own local community was prepared and driven by racial and religiously motivated hatred, and showed that he not only held neo-Nazi beliefs but was about to act on them to cause pain and suffering”.
