Alfie Coleman jailed 13 and a half years for terror plot preparation

Alfie Coleman was jailed for 13 and a half years at the Old Bailey after a retrial found him guilty of preparing for terrorist acts. Richard Marks KC ordered the 22-year-old to serve a further five years on extended licence, telling the court he had to be treated as a “dangerous offender” and describing his views as “virulently racist”.

The case turned on a joint operation by MI5 and Counter Terrorism Policing London, with undercover officers engaging with Coleman in encrypted chats as he tried to buy weapons. He was arrested on 29 September 2023 in a Morrisons car park in Stratford, east London, moments after collecting what appeared to be a Makarov pistol and about 200 rounds of ammunition, for which he had paid £3,500.

At trial, prosecutors told jurors Coleman, a former part-time Tesco worker from Great Notley, Essex, had been radicalised online from the age of 14. Jurors heard that he downloaded neo-Nazi material onto his iPad, kept a diary described in court as a manifesto, and compiled a hate list of colleagues and customers, branding them with racial slurs or as “race traitors”. Potential targets mentioned to the jury included the Lord Mayor of London and a mosque.

Evidence also showed he had explored buying a Skorpion automatic weapon, an AK47 rifle and bullets in France, and had gathered extremist material linked to Thomas Mair, Dylann Roof and Brenton Tarrant. Coleman had denied intending to carry out an attack and said his beliefs were only “intrusive thoughts”, but the jury convicted him after the Old Bailey retrial in April.

After sentencing, Commander Helen Flanagan of Counter Terrorism Policing London warned that younger people were increasingly being drawn into violent extremism online. She urged parents and carers to monitor children’s internet activity, and said extremist material was easy to find online, not just on the dark web. Counter Terrorism Policing London puts youths at one in five counter-terrorism cases.