Exclusive: Father tells Lizzie Dearden of ‘totally unreal’ arrest while travelling to family funeral. Steve* and his 16-year-old son Tom* were about to fly out of the UK to a family funeral when they heard their names being read out over the tannoy at Bristol Airport. They had arrived early to have some food and leave plenty of time before their flight, just two days after receiving news of a loved one’s death. “They just said ‘would you please go to gate number one’, which wasn’t our gate,” Steve tells The Independent. “We went there and there were police officers and they explained they were doing a Schedule 7 port stop under the Terrorism Act.” The power is used at UK borders to stop people entering or leaving the country, and “determine whether they are involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”. Unknown to Steve, counter-terror police had been monitoring his son’s online activity as he delved into online neo-Nazi networks. He became one of dozens of children prosecuted for terror offences in the UK, amid warnings over a “new generation of extremists” being radicalised by online material. Around 13 per cent of terror suspects are now under the age of 18, and the majority of those are linked to far-right extremism. Tom had started viewing extreme and violent channels on platforms including Discord and the encrypted messaging app Telegram, including one linked to a US militant group that has since been banned as a terrorist organisation (…) “It was a total shock, I just felt my whole world was falling apart,” he says. “I was coming back from a bloody funeral with my son and now I need to call my wife to tell her they arrested him and they are going to come to the house and search it. It was totally unreal.” The father arrived home to find officers searching their family home, taking air guns and books, and photographing Tom’s books, games and Warhammer figurines. An inspection of the teenager’s bedroom found neo-Nazi symbols including swastikas, SS runes, a noose and a reference to the lynching of “race traitors” carved into his desk. He had a skeleton face mask, popularised by terrorist groups including National Action and Atomwaffen Division, which he had worn in a series of photos found on his mobile phone.
via independent: ‘My whole world was falling apart’: Father of teenager prosecuted for neo-Nazi terror offences speaks of shock