From the Herts Advertiser
A Muslim convert who was found guilty of planning a terror attack has been jailed for life.
Self-styled “Anglo Jihadi” Jordan Richardson, who joked about going into a synagogue in a suicide vest, was planning an “atrocity” with a shopping centre among his possible targets, a court heard.
The 21-year-old, who “regularly expressed a wish to kill Jews”, was arrested in December 2024 on his way to work in Howden, East Yorkshire, with instructions on how to make mustard gas and a note which said: “Throw all grenades into crowd; Shoot bystanders; Stab anyone who comes close; Do not get taken alive.”
Leeds Crown Court jurors heard a crossbow was found at Richardson’s home, and his internet history showed an “affiliation with extreme Islamist ideology”.
A search of his online activity showed that his Instagram accounts included one with the handle “Anglo Jihadi”, and his possible targets for an attack included Meadowhall shopping centre, near Sheffield.
On Thursday Richardson was handed a discretionary life sentence and told he must serve a minimum term of 16 years by a judge who said he had “a genuine ideological commitment to violent jihad”.
The court heard Richardson has expressed allegiance to Islamic State in prison, with Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb saying he was “not on the path to deradicalisation”. . . prosecutors said he “wasn’t just an online fantasist” but an extremist who was “going to put his jihadi fantasies into reality”.
… prosecutor Katherine Robinson said: “(Richardson) regularly expressed a wish to kill Jews, for example using the terminology – the pillagers, the big noses and the money.
“He suggested going to Palestine to fight Jews and he searched for how to volunteer for Hamas from the UK and how to get to Palestine. . . he converted to Islam the day after Ramadan” and expressed his desires “to conduct jihad and kill infidels”.
She said the recipe for mustard gas “has been assessed as viable and potentially fatal for anyone exposed to it” and that this substance would be capable of being loaded into a grenade.
