Counter terror expert warns about rise in online radicalisation
After the sentencing of a Liverpool student, a counter terror expert says there's been a rise in people being radicalised online
A counter terror expert says there could be thousands of people who are vulnerable to being turned into a terrorist from their bedrooms.
It's after 20-year-old Jacob Graham from Liverpool, who claimed he wanted to kill at least 50 people in an attack, was jailed for 13 years yesterday.
The college student wrote a "how to" guide on weapons and bombs dedicated to "misfits" and "social nobodies", and his "idol" was US terrorist Theodore Kaczynski the "Unabomber". He also spoke of feeling wronged by his college and going on a "rampage", Manchester Crown Court heard.
During the course of the five-week trial jurors heard Graham was motivated by a hatred and contempt for the Government, whom he perceived as tyrannical and oppressive of those he termed "working class" people.
He was found guilty of one count of the preparation of terrorist acts, four counts of possession of information for terrorist purposes and two of dissemination of a terrorist publication, between May 2022 and May 2023.
Graham was cleared of one count of preparation of terrorist acts.
Around three thousand people are currently being monitored in the UK as potential terror threats.
Dr David Lowe is a counter terror expert, he said: "The categories (of people who are vulnerable) are just so diverse. Loners, people who don't feel they're fitting in but they can then fit in online, and that's when the grooming process starts.
"When someone starts to get involved with these extremist groups it starts off very friendly, and then they bring them in. It's a bit like grooming that we see for sexual offences, it's the same pattern. It's befriending someone, bringing them onboard, and getting them more deeply ensnared into the deeper web, which is so deeply encrypted it's more difficult to stop.
"But as we've seen with this case, the counter terrorism police and the security service can manage to keep an eye on what's going on on some of these sites, it's just a bit harder work than through an open source.
"This is not an atypical case. We're seeing an increase, certainly post-covid when people were in lockdown there was a big concern then, but it's still ongoing."