Terrorists with large online following face more jail time

TERRORISTS who have a wide social media reach will be sentenced more harshly under new guidelines if they use online platforms to encourage others to engage in terror activity, it has emerged. The Sentencing Council has announced that anyone who uses a number of different sites like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to disseminate extremist material and who has a large following will be penalised.

But in a change to suggested guidance published last autumn the council decided high-level community orders should be used for the least serious offences, instead of prison time, amid fears that going to jail could put them in touch with more radical extremists.

The new guidance for judges has been designed to tackle offences where terrorists use knives, cars and other everyday methods to cause death or injure people in the name of an extreme ideology.

Anyone using encrypted social media like Whatsapp will also be looked upon more harshly, the new guidelines state, because they have attempted to hide their plans. It will be known as an “aggravating factor”, as will the use of “multiple social media platforms to reach a wider audience”.

Someone whose videos on Youtube reach 10,000 people would be looked on more harshly than someone whose material had only been played 10 times.

The plans have been fast-tracked after Britain was hit by five terror attacks last year.