Wednesday 9 September 2009

Six Years For White Supremacist Loser




A jobless loser - who lived in misery with his mum and dad - was caged for a six-year minimum on Tuesday for making homemade bombs in his lonely bedroom to arm himself in a white supremacy campaign of terror.

Unemployed Neil Lewington, 43, had not uttered a word to his father in ten years at the family home in Tilehurst, Reading where police found weedkiller, firelighters, three tennis balls with diagrams on how to convert them into shrapnel bombs, firework powder, electrical timers and detonators.

He was convicted in July of having explosives with intent to endanger life and preparing for acts of terrorism.

Judge Peter Thornton said: "You are a dangerous man, somebody who exhibits emotional coldness and detachment.

"You would not have been troubled by the prospect of endangering somebody's life."

Lewington was arrested - on his way to an online date - last October at Lowestoft Station, Suffolk, after hurling abuse at a female train conductor.

A search of his bag uncovered two home-made bombs.

The judge said these had been made "to a very high standard."

"These were dangerous firebombs, meticulously constructed, all set to go," he said.

A notebook labelled "Waffen SS UK members' handbook" included a "device logbook" of drawings of electronics and chemical mixtures.

He also kept video tapes about right-wing extremists, including London nailbomber David Copeland and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh - who murdered 168 people when he blew up a US government building in 1995.

During the trial, Lewington was described as a loner who had been unemployed for 10 years after losing his last job owing to drunkenness, and who had also not spoken to his father for a decade.

The court heard he spent time searching for girlfriends on chatlines, where he made racist remarks and spoke of converting tennis balls into bombs.

His defence QC had argued Lewington was just an "oddball" and was not a terrorist, but merely "a big pest, a nuisance".

But the judge told Lewington: "You were in the process of embarking upon terrorist activity.

"You were going to use or threaten action involving either serious violence to people or serious damage to property.

"This action was designed to intimidate non-white people and it was for the purpose of pursuing the ideological cause of white supremacy and neo-fascism, albeit in a rather unsophisticated way."

He will serve at least six years, but even then can only be released if the parole board considers he is no longer a threat to the public.

"Neil Lewington clearly set out to make viable devices which could have seriously injured or possibly killed members of the public going about their daily lives," said Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall.



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