Briton sentenced to 11 years in prison for videos that inspired US killings


Photos and candles in memory of the victims of the Colorado Springs massacre in November 2022. AFP

The Manchester court ruled that white supremacist Daniel Harris’s videos inspired the racist Buffalo shootings in May and the shootings at a Colorado Springs gay club in November.

A British white supremacist was sentenced on Friday to 11 and a half years in prison for making and distributing videos calling for armed insurrection, which the prosecution says inspired two killings in the United States.

The court judge in Manchester, northern England, described 19-year-old Daniel Harris as a “propagandist defending a right-wing extremist ideology» pronouncing his sentence. His videos have been linked to the racist Buffalo shooting that killed 10 people in northern New York last May and the shooting that killed five people at a gay club in Colorado Springs (western United States) in November.

Already condemned

A native of northern England, the latter was convicted in December of five counts of incitement to terrorism and possession of terrorist material because of a 3D printer he wanted to use to make weapons.

Judge Patrick Field pointed out that he had “no hesitationto conclude that Daniel Harris was “highly dangerous”, evoking the killings inspired by his videos. “What their authors did was appalling but it was nothing more than what you wanted to encourage by publishing such content online“, he estimated.“You were in close contact with other right-wing extremists and there is little doubt that you exchanged ideas“, did he declare.

In his videos, Daniel Harris notably glorified the murder of 51 Muslim worshipers in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a white supremacist in 2019. The young Briton called for example to “the extermination of all subhumans once and for all“. According to British media, he faces extradition to the United States. – “Not unique

According to the police, his videos were referenced seven times by Payton Gendron, who pleaded guilty at the end of 2022 to racist murders and acts of terrorism after the murder of ten black people in Buffalo. Payton Gendron, who was 18 at the time, should probably be sentenced to life in prison in New York State. But he is also charged in federal court, where he theoretically faces the death penalty.

One of the videos of Daniel Harris was also featured on the site of Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, a suspect in the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, where he was overpowered by two patrons after shooting into the crowd at the using an assault rifle.


HAVEALSO – Germany: a far-right group that wanted to attack the Bundestag has been dismantled

Early convictions

Out of school since he was seven years old, he had been convicted of having vandalized a memorial in Manchester in tribute to George Floyd, African-American whose murder in 2020 by a white policeman had been at the origin of the movement “Black Lives Matter“.

He had been contacted by deradicalization services after a video tribute to the neo-Nazi murderer of pro-European Labor MP Jo Cox was murdered in 2016 a week before the Brexit referendum. He had then escaped the surveillance of the authorities by evoking a temporary bewilderment.

The New Threat of Far-Right Terrorism

In a statement, Inspector Chris Brett of Derbyshire Police stressed that the investigation had been “extremely difficult but unfortunately not unique“.

It’s no secret that across the country we’re seeing more and more young people appearing on counter-terrorism police radar, especially those who hold far-right views.“, he noted.

In December, a parliamentary report expressed alarm at the increase “constantof the far-right terrorist threat in the UK, with an increasing number of young people under the age of 24 in the sights of domestic intelligence (MI5).

The new threat of far-right terrorism is fragmented and complex, increasingly fueled by the internet and characterized by a tech-savvy population, made up mostly of young men, many of them still teenagers, who are typically self-initiated terrorists“, said the report.



Source link -94