Media made Hitler admirer want to petrol bomb mosques

A Nazi sympathiser who threatened to blow up mosques and kill Muslims has been jailed for eight years.

Liam Seabrook, 31, told his probation officer that he planned to kill Muslims and petrol bomb mosques four days after the Manchester Arena terrorist attack last May. In response to a routine inquiry via text message from his probation officer, Seabrook replied, “After (the Manchester bombing) Muslims and mosques need to be petrol bombed.”

Seabrook texted the officer saying “If something happens, something happens” when asked if he was going to do something.

Teesside Crown Court heard that Seabrook, from Thornaby, possessed a collection of “crude, medieval, torture implements” at his home. The weapons had nails, razor blades, screws and even a kitchen knife protruding from one of them.

One of the weapons, a bundle of sticks inserted with blades, was described as similar to a “fasces” used in Roman times.

Seabrook also kept had four bottles of washing up liquid filled with petrol in a cupboard outside his front door.

Paul Abrahams, prosecuting, said that Seabrook’s weapons were adapted to cause “significant injuries”. Seabrook also possessed cable ties “in case he needed to kidnap somebody”.

Psychiatrists later discovered that he was fascinated by the Third Reich and Hitler in particular, with internet searches showing Seabrook had also searched material from the Ku Klux Klan.

Alex Bousfield, defending Seabrook, said that his client had never taken the weapons out of his flat and claimed he had “seen the outside world through media reports”, making him “fearful of almost anyone except white males”.

Seabrook, who has been diagnosed with a mixed personality disorder, had previous convictions for arson, writing racist graffiti, and leaving a note in a library calling for immigrants to be banned from the venue.

He admitted charges of making threats to kill, malicious communications, making threats to destroy property and having articles with intent to destroy property.

Judge Simon Bourne-Arton described Seabrook as “dangerous”, while his weapons could have “resulted in extreme injury, if not death, if put to use”.

He was sentenced to eight years in jail, with an extended two year license period. Seabrook was also banned from having petrol or adapted weapons and from going within 200 metres of any mosques.

Judge Bourne-Arton stressed that as Seabrook was not charged with terrorist offences, he was “constrained” to giving the offender a maximum sentence of ten years.