Far-right sent messages to van attack suspect
THE man accused of carrying out the Finsbury Park terror attack received online messages from two of Britain’s most notorious farright activists just weeks before the incident, a court has heard.
Detectives who examined electronic devices belonging to Darren Osborne, 48, found emails and direct Twitter messages sent from accounts linked to Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of the controversial Britain First group, and Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the extremist English Defence League.
One email, sent from an account linked to Mr Robinson and his supporters, made reference to the Manchester terror attack. It read: “What Salman Abedi did is not the beginning and it won’t be the end. There is a nation within a nation forming just beneath the surface of the UK. It is a nation built on hatred, on violence and on Islam.”
Mr Osborne, an unemployed father of four from Cardiff, is accused of deliberately driving a van into a group of Muslims after becoming brainwashed by farright propaganda following the broadcast of Three Girls, the BBC drama about the Rochdale grooming scandal.
The attack on June 19 last year in the Finsbury Park area of north London, left 51-year-old Makram Ali dead and several others injured.
The jury at Woolwich Crown Court heard that on June 17, the day he picked up the van, he googled Tommy Robinson and looked at tweets including one that said: “Where was the day of rage after the terror attack. All I saw was the lighting of candles.”
The court also heard from Callum Spence, a serving British soldier, who said he asked Mr Osborne to leave the Hollybush Pub in Cardiff on June 16, after he allegedly made a series of racist remarks and said: “I’m going to kill all Muslims.”
Mr Osborne denies one count of murder and one count of attempted murder and the trial continues.