Student jailed for Prince Harry taunt
A STUDENT who shared ‘abhorrent’ posts online and branded Prince Harry a race traitor has been jailed.
A STUDENT who shared ‘abhorrent’ posts online and branded the Duke of Sussex a race traitor has been jailed.
Michal Szewczuk, 19, who was in his first year studying computer science at the University of Portsmouth was arrested at his halls of residence in December.
He created an image of Harry with a pistol to his head against a blood-spattered background.
The picture, which also featured a blood-smeared swastika, was shared on a far-right social media platform in August last year, just a few months after the duke married mixed race former actress Meghan Markle.
The post included the phrase ‘See Ya Later Race Traitor’.
Szewczuk has been jailed for four years and three months after pleading guilty to two counts of encouraging terrorism and five counts of possession of terrorist material, including the White Resistance Manual and the Al Qaeda Trading Manual.
The 19-year-old, of Wyther Park in Bramley, Leeds, also wrote an ‘extremely violent and aggressively misogynistic’ blog which attempted to justify the rape of women and children in the pursuit of an Aryan race.
Szewczuk was sentenced at the Old Bailey alongside 18-year-old Oskar Dunn-Koczorowski, from St Albans Avenue in west London, who had admitted two counts of encouraging terrorism.
Judge Rebecca Poulet QC said the pair promoted the extreme violent ideology of right-wing groups inspired by racist and anti-Semitic neo-Nazism.
Referring to the image of Harry, the judge said: ‘The posts I have seen and read are abhorrent as well as criminal by reason of their clear intention to encourage terrorist acts.’
She told Szewczuk: ‘Individuals were urged to go out and commit appalling acts of violence on others for no reason that can ever be understood by any right thinking individuals.’
The defendants appeared in court via video-link from Belmarsh Prison and gave no reaction as they were sentenced.