Scottish Daily Mail

Hate-filled loner with a doting mum and a weapons obsession

- By Tom Rawstorne

ArM in arm, Antonitza Smith and her son Damon celebrate his 18th birthday with a grin, a chocolate milkshake and a thumbs-up for the camera.

The picture has pride of place on the 48-yearold’s Facebook page, with snaps of the duo sightseein­g in London and playing with their dog Skippy. They are the sort of memories a doting single mum might want to preserve of precious time with an only child.

But other images on the same Facebook page are altogether more perplexing. One shows Damon Smith with his face concealed by a mask, brandishin­g a knuckle-duster and handcuffs.

In another, the young man and another male pose with a fearsome-looking gun.

The online album begs a simple question – who is the real Smith? Is it the curly-haired one-time altar boy who still refers to his mother as ‘Mumma’ and is in turn referred to as her ‘baby’? Or is Smith something far more sinister – a man brainwashe­d by extremist Islamist ideology who, but for a failed detonator, was a spark away from bringing carnage to the London Undergroun­d?

Yesterday a jury at the Old Bailey took just two hours to convict the 20-year-old of possessing an explosive substance with intent to endanger life. But because the trial lasted only four days and Smith declined to give evidence, the wider background to this case was not fully explored.

While the Asperger’s sufferer was undoubtedl­y a vulnerable young man it is the way in which that vulnerabil­ity was manipulate­d and given expression that is deeply worrying.

Speaking to friends and family, the Daily Mail has built up a picture of a loner bullied at school, who struggled to make friends in the real world.

Instead, he turned to the darker reaches of the web. From his bedroom in the Devon town of Newton Abbot, he collected an arsenal of knives and other weaponry, even downloadin­g details of how to make a bomb. His interests brought him into the orbit of Islamist extremists and the doctrines of hate preached by Al Qaeda and IS.

FrIeNDS say Smith became obsessed with watching videos of beheadings. Quoting from the Koran, he insisted they call him Ismail and spoke of his desire to commit atrocities. Investigat­ors found a photo of him with former postman Sajid Idris who has been arrested but not charged with belonging to a banned Islamist group.

And where was his mother in all of this? Having indulged his every whim when he was a child, she continued through his teenage years. Believing his interest in Islam was entirely innocent, it was claimed in court she encouraged it in the same way she did other interests. What Damon wanted Damon got, it seems.

‘He did not know what he was doing,’ she shouted during one hearing ahead of the trial. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s my son.’

That Mrs Smith shouldered the burden of his upbringing there can be no doubt. She was 27 when he was born, having married his father Nicholas, a clerical officer from Surrey five years her junior, while heavily pregnant. Within a couple of years they had separated.

From then, relatives say there was little or no contact between son and father. Mrs Smith, the daughter of Greek Cypriot parents, moved to Torquay in Devon, where she had grown up. She gave up her job as a rail ticket inspector to raise her son.

Smith was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a disorder that affected the way he interacted and can result in a lack of empathy. But the boy was categorise­d as ‘high functionin­g’ and his condition did not impair his intelligen­ce, meaning he could attend mainstream school.

‘He got bullied quite a bit because of his high-pitched, girly voice and the way he acted,’ said Connor Smith, a friend. ‘People thought he was gay … they would take the mickey out of him.’

At times the bullying was so bad that his mother took him out of school to educate him at home. But despite every effort to curry favour with him, she also found her son hard to control.

‘She was too soft on him from the very start,’ Paul Antoniou, her half-brother, told the Daily Mail. ‘She would lavish love and presents on him. If he wanted a laptop, he got a laptop and he always had the latest mobile phone. He really controlled Antonitza and we all told her she shouldn’t treat him like that. But she wouldn’t listen.’

The one healthy distractio­n Smith enjoyed was judo. But his interest in martial arts extended to weaponry. At the age of 12, he purchased a police baton and nunchuks online. He also had a collection of knives.

This interest was all the more worrying given his temper. At 15 he was banned from his judo club for punching an opponent in the face. As ever, his mother backed him up – even though she was also on the receiving end of his mood swings.

‘We saw Damon threaten his mum a number of times,’ said Connor. ‘He would swear at her and push her around if he couldn’t get his own way…and

she always had to have his food ready when he wanted it. He would threaten her with pepper spray and his knife.’

Mrs Smith indulged another of her son’s interests – poker, allowing him to play online and in casinos. His relative added: ‘We saw the two of them together at a casino in Torquay and I said to her Damon shouldn’t be here. But she just shrugged her shoulders…no one could say anything to his mother to stop him.’

On social media Smith posted photos of himself with wads of £20 notes he had won playing cards. Friends say he used the money to buy more weapons.

Vinnie Jones, 19, became his best friend after Smith and his mother moved into a small terraced house in Newton Abbot four years ago.

At the time Smith was studying for his GCSEs before moving to Exeter College for his A-levels. He dated Vinnie’s older sister, Deanne, but the relationsh­ip did not amount to much, partly because Mrs Smith insisted on accompanyi­ng her son on his dates.

Vinnie said: ‘I would go round to his house to play poker with him. It was during this time he began to tell me about his interest in IS.’

MATErIAl on Smith’s computer included interviews of Muslim converts in london headed ‘Islam Winning The Hearts Of The Youth In Europe’.

‘He was always going on about how he wanted to join IS,’ Vinnie added. ‘At first I just thought he was showing off but I found out he was serious. He had a black jihadi outfit and he showed me videos of executions by IS…I argued with him that they were sick, but he just said he would love to be like them.

‘On one occasion he told me he wanted to make a kitchen bomb and I was really scared…He said he was going to Turkey where he was going to meet a guy and the two were going to try to get into Iraq. He also told me that when he was younger he had applied to join the police but he failed…he was always very anti the police.’

In July 2016 the pair fell out after Smith posted a YouTube video he had made called ‘Jihadi Jones’. It combined old photos of Vinnie with IS videos. Vinnie said: ‘I went straight to the police … I didn’t want anything to do with him.’

Quite what the police response to the complaint was is unclear. The same applies to his mother. She dismissed his fascinatio­n with weaponry as ‘silly’. During one hearing, prosecutor Jonathan rees accused her of ‘humouring and normalisin­g’ her son’s behaviour.

After A-levels Smith won a place at london Metropolit­an University to study forensic computing, and so in June last year they moved to Bermondsey, south-east london. Mrs Smith told neighbours she was there so he did not have to live in halls. On October 20 he left home in the morning as usual and on the way to university left a homemade bomb in a rucksack on a Tube train.

The incident caused the biggest alert on the Tube network since the london bombings of July 2005. Smith went on to college and later checked the internet for news of what he had done.

Following his arrest the next day, police found Islamist material at his home, including a picture of him posing with an image of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was behind the Paris attacks in 2015, in which 130 people died.

They also found shredded pages from Inspire, an illegal Al Qaeda magazine, including advice on making a bomb in the ‘kitchen of your mom’, annotated in Smith’s handwritin­g. An iPad contained a list of ‘pressure cooker bomb materials’ ending with: ‘Keep this a secret between me and Allah. #InspireThe­Believers.’

In court Smith chose not to give evidence. But he had previously claimed that he had planted the bomb as a prank and that he only intended for it to emit smoke.

Smith’s lawyer told jurors he was no ‘hate-filled jihadi’ and that there was ‘no evidence that he changed from clinging to his mother’s apron strings to a soldier of Islam’.

Given what has emerged about his background – and the very real threat he posed to innocent members of the public – it is a claim that many will find very hard to stomach.

 ??  ?? Fire power: Holding a gun as a teenager
Fire power: Holding a gun as a teenager
 ??  ?? Sick joke: Posing in a mock execution
Sick joke: Posing in a mock execution
 ??  ??
 ??  ?? Obsession: The student built up a collection of knives and replica guns Close bond: Damon Smith with his mother Antonitza, right, on his 18th birthday
Obsession: The student built up a collection of knives and replica guns Close bond: Damon Smith with his mother Antonitza, right, on his 18th birthday

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