A 21-year-old-man from Bradford has today (August 1) been jailed after he admitted possessing terrorist documents.
Ondrej Sidelka (16/02/2004) of Elwyn Road, pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court on April 11 to eight counts of possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, contrary to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
A further charge of disseminating a terrorist publication, contrary to Section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006, was discontinued.
Sidelka was imprisoned for two years and will spend a further year on licence. He will be subject to a Terrorism Notification Order for 10 years when he is released.
The offences were discovered when Sidelka was arrested in November 2022 for an unrelated incident. When his phone was downloaded, a large quantity of racist, homophobic, anti-semitic and neo-Nazi material was found in his Google Drive and Dropbox storage accounts, along with several instruction manuals on how to manufacture firearms, explosives and poisons.
As a result, Sidelka was arrested in May 2023 by officers from Counter Terrorism Policing North East.
As well as a fascination with homemade firearms, Sidelka had collected material which glorified racist violence and murder, including a graphic video of the 2019 attack on a mosque in New Zealand by Brenton Tarrant which killed 51 people.
Propaganda material from the proscribed extreme right wing terrorist groups Atomwaffen, Feuerkrieg Division and Terrorgram were also found in his cloud storage accounts.
Detective Chief Superintendent James Dunkerley, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing North East, said: “The shocking and disturbing racist material Sidelka downloaded, as well as his interest in extreme violence and manufacturing homemade firearms, show the threat he posed to the community.
“The efforts he made to disguise his true identity online, and to post opinions on social media which were not as extreme as those he held in private, indicate that he knew how unacceptable his views really were.
“Sidelka was 18 at the time he committed these offences. Young people are particularly vulnerable when it comes to being influenced by hateful and harmful ideologies online, and I would urge people to ACT Early and help us to stop young people being drawn into extremism.”
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