
UK neo-Nazis convicted of planning mosque, synagogue ‘race war' attack
Police in the United Kingdom say three men have been convicted of planning to carry out an attack on mosques or synagogues in anticipation of a coming race war.
Brogan Stewart and Marco Pitzettu, both aged 25, and Christopher Ringrose, 34, all pleaded not guilty but were convicted of all charges by jurors at Sheffield Crown Court on Wednesday. Sentencing is scheduled for July 17.
'Stewart, Pitzettu, and Ringrose have today been rightfully convicted of multiple terrorism offences,' Detective Chief Superintendent James Dunkerley, head of Counter Terrorism Policing North East, said in a statement.
'They were a group that espoused vile racist views and advocated for violence, all to support their extreme right-wing mindset.'
The convictions come amid a debate in the UK over immigration rights as the left-of-centre Labour Party adopts increasingly harsh rhetoric on migration amid increasing public support for the far right. Critics said a recent speech by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in which he said immigration threatened to turn the UK into an 'island of strangers' helps legitimise a view perpetuated by the far right that immigration is a destructive and dangerous force.
The convicted far-right group was part of a Telegram channel named Einsatz 14, in which they talked about executing former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and torturing imams.
'It was their belief that there must soon come a time when there would be a race war between the white and other races,' prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford told jurors.
Conspiracy theories that Muslims and immigrants are carrying out a 'great replacement' of white people in Western nations have become increasingly widespread on the right in recent years.
That conspiracy often involves an anti-Semitic angle, portraying Jews as supporters of pro-immigration policies meant to weaken Western nations from the inside.
All three men were convicted of planning an act of terrorism and multiple firearms offences. They were found guilty of two counts of collecting information that could be useful to someone preparing a terrorist act, and Ringrose was additionally charged with manufacturing a component for a 3D-printed FGC9 firearm.
Prosecutors said the group was preparing for an act of terrorism when they were arrested in February 2024. Their trial began in March.
'Some of their defence in court was that it was all fantasy or just part of harmless chat, however all three took real world steps to plan and prepare for carrying out an attack on innocent citizens,' Dunkerley said.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Al Jazeera
7 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Frederick Forsyth, former spy and Day of the Jackal author, dies aged 86
Best-selling British novelist Frederick Forsyth, author of about 20 spy thrillers, has died at the age of 86. Forsyth, who was a reporter and informant for Britain's MI6 spy agency before turning his hand to writing blockbuster novels like The Day of the Jackal, died on Monday at his home in the village of Jordans in Buckinghamshire, said Jonathan Lloyd, his agent. 'We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers,' Lloyd said of the author, who started writing novels to clear his debts in his early 30s, going on to sell more than 75 million books. 'There are several ways of making quick money, but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank,' he said in his 2015 autobiography, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue. The gamble paid off after he penned The Day of the Jackal – his story of a fictional assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle by right-wing extremists – in just 35 days. The novel met immediate success when it came out in 1971. It was later turned into a film and led to Venezuelan revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sanchez being nicknamed Carlos the Jackal. Forsyth went on to write a string of bestsellers, including The Odessa File (1972) and The Dogs of War (1974). His 18th novel, The Fox, was published in 2018. Forsyth trained as an air force pilot, but his linguistic talents – he spoke French, German, Spanish and Russian – led him to the Reuters news agency in 1961 with postings in Paris and East Berlin during the Cold War. He left Reuters for the BBC but soon became disillusioned by its bureaucracy and what he saw as the corporation's failure to cover Nigeria properly due to the government's postcolonial views on Africa. His autobiography revealed how he became a spy, the author recounting that he was approached by 'Ronnie' from MI6 in 1968, who wanted 'an asset deep inside the Biafran enclave' in Nigeria, where civil war had broken out the year before. In 1973, Forsyth was asked to conduct a mission for MI6 in communist East Germany, driving his Triumph convertible to Dresden to receive a package from a Russian colonel in the toilets of the Albertinum museum. The writer said he was never paid by MI6 but in return received help with his book research and submitted draft pages to ensure he was not divulging sensitive information. In his later years, Forsyth turned his attention to politics, delivering withering, right-wing takes on the modern world in columns for the anti-European Union Daily Express. Divorced from Carole Cunningham in 1988, he married Sandy Molloy in 1994. He lost a fortune in an investment scam in the 1980s and had to write more novels to support himself. He had two sons, Stuart and Shane, with his first wife.


Al Jazeera
16 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
US and China to take second shot at averting trade war in London talks
High-level delegations from the United States and China are to meet in London to try to save a fragile tariffs deal and avert a possible trade war that has already roiled the global economy and sparked fears of recession. The meeting on Monday follows negotiations in Geneva last month that resulted in a temporary respite in the trade war between the world's two biggest economies. However, the agreement to suspend most of the 100 percent-plus tariffs each had imposed on the other for 90 days has been followed by barbs fired by both sides. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will meet with a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng at an undisclosed location in the British capital. 'The meeting should go very well,' US President Donald Trump, who announced the talks on Friday after a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, wrote on social media. 'We want China and the United States to continue moving forward with the agreement that was struck in Geneva,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Sunday. While the government of United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer reiterated that it was not involved in the talks in London, a spokesperson said, 'A trade war is in nobody's interests, so we welcome these talks.' The meeting comes just a few days after Trump and Xi held their first publicly acknowledged telephone call since the Republican returned to the White House in January. Trump said Thursday's call had reached a 'very positive conclusion'. The US president had previously accused China of violating the Geneva deal and described Xi as 'hard to make a deal with'. Xi was quoted by the state-run news agency Xinhua as saying 'correcting the course of the big ship of Sino-US relations requires us to steer well and set the direction'. Underscoring the impact of the trade war, customs data released on Monday showed Chinese exports to the US plunged by 34.5 percent year-on-year in May, the sharpest drop since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, stock markets in Asia, including in China, rose on Monday before the new round of talks.


Al Jazeera
18 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
US travel ban takes effect amid LA protests against immigration crackdown
President Donald Trump's order banning citizens from 12 countries from entering the United States has come into effect amid rising political tensions over his administration's harsh anti-immigration policies. The measure, announced by Trump last week as necessary to prevent the importation of 'terrorists', took effect on Monday. The clampdown comes amid chaotic scenes on the streets of Los Angeles as crowds of protesters battled with police and National Guard troops following a wave of arrests by immigration authorities. The divisive order revives similar measures rolled out during Trump's first term, as travellers from several, mostly Muslim, countries were blocked from entering the US. Many of the countries affected by the new order are afflicted by war and large-scale displacement. No visible disruption was immediately discernible at Los Angeles International Airport in the hours after the new ban took effect, according to the Associated Press news agency. The order applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, the Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Heightened restrictions were also placed on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Trump said the countries subjected to the most severe restrictions were determined to harbour a 'large-scale presence of terrorists', fail to cooperate on visa security and have an inability to verify travellers' identities. These countries were also inadequate in keeping records of criminal histories and had high rates of visa overstays in the US, according to Trump. The new ban does not revoke visas previously issued to people from countries on the list, according to guidance issued on Friday to all US diplomatic missions. But it remains unclear how those rules will be implemented at the ports of entry. During Trump's first term, a similar travel ban resulted in confusion and disrupted travel. In announcing the new restriction last week, Trump said the measure was spurred by a recent 'terrorist attack' on Jewish people in the US state of Colorado. The group had been protesting in solidarity with captives held in Gaza when they were assaulted by an Egyptian man that the White House said had overstayed his visa. That attack, Trump said, 'underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted'. He warned that new countries could be added 'as threats emerge around the world'. Egypt is not among the states affected by the ban or increased scrutiny. Volker Turk, United Nations high commissioner for human rights, warned that 'the broad and sweeping nature of the new travel ban raises concerns from the perspective of international law'. The ban comes amid protests in the city of Los Angeles against immigration raids, carried out as part of Trump's hardline policy. Over the weekend, Trump ordered the deployment of 2,000 members of the National Guard to Los Angeles County to quell the protests, bypassing the authority of the governor of California and sending tensions spiking. Thousands of protesters flooded the streets in response on Sunday, blocking a major freeway and setting fire to cars. Law enforcement responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flashbangs in an effort to disperse the crowds. Early on Monday, authorities declared downtown Los Angeles an 'unlawful assembly' zone and ordered the area cleared. California Governor Gavin Newsom has formally requested that the Trump administration rescind the order deploying National Guard troops to the city. The order is believed to be the first time in 60 years that a president has deployed a state's National Guard without the governor's consent. The last instance was in 1965, when President Lyndon B Johnson used troops to protect predominantly Black demonstrators during the civil rights movement in Alabama. However, officials from the Trump administration, aware that aggressive immigration enforcement is popular among his base, have been eager to declare that they will clamp down on what they have labelled an 'insurrection' and 'migrant invasion'.