(Reuters) – Three British right-wing extremists planned to collect an arsenal of weapons, including a 3D-printed gun, and carry out an attack as part of a “race war”, prosecutors said at the start of their trial on Wednesday.
Brogan Stewart and Marco Pitzettu, both 25, and Christopher Ringrose, 34, are alleged to have been preparing an act of terrorism, targeting mosques or synagogues, when they were arrested in February 2024.
The trio are also each charged with two counts of collecting information which may be useful to someone preparing an act of terrorism, while Ringrose is charged with manufacturing a component for a 3D-printed FGC9 firearm.
They have pleaded not guilty and are standing trial at Sheffield Crown Court, where prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford told jurors the three defendants were “right-wing extremists who regarded themselves as national socialists or Nazis”.
Sandiford said the trio expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and perpetrators of notorious terrorist attacks, as well as hatred for non-white people, especially Muslims and immigrants.
“It was their belief that there must soon come a time when there would be a race war between the white and other races,” Sandiford added.
He said that, among hundreds of messages, Stewart posted a poll in a group on social media platform Telegram asking “how do we execute the prime minister”, who was then Rishi Sunak.
In a separate Facebook group, Stewart said: “Need to fire up some gas chambers and purge this country of the shit. Make England great again.”
The defendants formed a Telegram group called “Einsatz 14” in January 2024, which Sandiford said was “a group for action rather than words”. Three other members of the group were undercover police officers, the prosecutor added.
Stewart, Pitzettu and Ringrose had identified potential targets for a violent attack “and it was that imminent threat that led the police to intervene and the defendants being arrested”, Sandiford said.
The trial is expected to conclude next month.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin in London; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
