A Scot accused of planning a terrorist attack was a “sheep” who “pretended to be a big man” out of a desperate desire to be noticed, his trial was told.
Sam Imrie, 24, is accused of preparing to commit acts of terrorism and suggesting online that he planned to attack the Fife Islamic Centre in Glenrothes.
Giving his closing speech at the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday, defence lawyer Jim Keegan QC said his client was a “vulnerable person” and “susceptible to influences”.
Imrie tried unsuccessfully to “con” users on a far-right channel into believing he set fire to a mosque, Mr Keegan said.
The lawyer added: “He pretended to be a big man. To be someone who was a hero. To be someone they would want to talk to. To ingratiate himself.
“He didn’t manage it. His reward was prison.”
Earlier Mr Keegan said it was 75 years since leading Nazis were convicted during the Nuremburg Trials and asked why “any sane individual would want to be associated with the inhumanity and moral turpitude of the Nazis”.
But he said neo-Nazism remained a “global phenomenon” and its adherents had been “emboldened” in recent years, leading to the “catastrophic murder of innocents” in events like the 2019 Christchurch mosques mass shootings.
Mr Keegan said it was “right” that anti-terror laws - which he described as “draconian” - were in place to try and prevent such atrocities.
However, he said it was now up to the jury to consider what Imrie had actually done after becoming “caught up” in this legislation.
He said: “This is not a court of morals, a court of revenge, or a preventative tribunal.”
Mr Keegan said Imrie “contributed to what was going on” in a channel on internet platform Telegram for the extreme right, but asked the jurors to consider what his “mindset” was at the time.
While contemporaries were “progressing” in their lives, Imrie was “going nowhere” Mr Keegan explained, adding: “He was left in his room drinking and looking at rubbish on the internet”.
The QC said Imrie’s schooling ended at 14 when he was attacked in a Glenrothes park and it began a “downward spiral which took him to a solitary existence in his room”.
He said: “He was not a leader. In truth he was a sheep.”
Mr Keegan referred to videos that Imrie shot around the Fife Islamic Centre on July 4 2019 that the Crown argued were “eloquent of an intention to commit an arson attack”.
He described this allegation as “nonsense”, telling the court that Imrie could’ve set the building alight if he wanted to with the petrol can in his car.
Mr Keegan said Imrie could’ve had “notoriety in Technicolour if he wanted to splash the petrol all over the door”. He added: “Did he do that? No, he didn’t.”
Instead he said Imrie drove to a derelict building and set its entrance area on fire, claimed to those watching on Telegram that it was a mosque, then was “ridiculed” by them.
He said the “would-be terrorist plot” set out by the prosecution was “vandalism of an abandoned building”.
Mr Keegan said Imrie hated Muslims in 2019 despite not knowing any, Mr Keegan said, and expressed racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim opinions on Telegram.
But the 278 users on the “fashwave” channel were “just a group of people talking rubbish to each other” said Mr Keegan who asked if Imrie was “encouraging terrorism or taking part in the ramblings of a cabal of idiots?”
A video shot by Imrie does show “some influence” from footage live streamed by terrorist Brenton Tarrant when he carried out the New Zealand mosque attacks, Mr Keegan said. But he added its contents demonstrated “the vulnerability of the accused” and “his need to be noticed, to be part of something”.
He asked if this was “encouraging terrorism” or the actions of a “sheep who wants to follow this group and be part of it”.
Imrie, who denies all of the nine charges against him, is accused of publishing or causing another person to publish statements, images and video footage on Facebook and Telegram glorifying terrorist acts committed by convicted terrorists Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant between June 22 2018 and July 4 2019.
He is accused of posting statements on Telegram indicating he planned to stream live footage of “an incident” and posting statements suggesting he was going to carry out an attack on the Fife Islamic Centre.
Prosecutors allege Imrie collected information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism between June 20 and July 4 2019.
The trial continues.
