Digital forensic expert tells court of amount of racist images on computer

A COMPUTER seized from a man on trial for terrorism offences contained thousands of racist images, a court has heard.

The Apple Mac computer contained thousands of images that were “anti-jewish, anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-everything”, a police expert told the High Court in Edinburgh.

One such image was a photoshopped picture of the pop star Taylor Swift, manipulated to show swastikas in the lenses of her sunglasses, the “SS” nazi military symbol on her shirt, with the words “1488 world tour”, numbers which are associated with neo-nazism.

The computer also contained 29 child sexual exploitations images.

Two copies of the book Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, three copies of The Great Replacement by the Christchurch mass killer, Brenton Tarrant, a manifesto by convicted terrorist Anders Breivik and two documents related to making knives were also found, the court heard.

Giving evidence, Robert Steer, 51, a cybercrime leader in digital forensics for the police, told the court he could not recall seeing that amount of racist images on one computer in his time in the job.

The court heard that two accounts for the photo-sharing app Snapchat were found on the computer, with the usernames “n ***** killer148” and “racewarplz”, which Mr Steer told the court could be translated as “race war please”.

Of the child sexual exploitation images, one was classed as

“category B” under the UK’S child abuse image database (CAID), and a further 28 were classed as category C.

Category B relates to “images involving non-penetrative sexual activity with a child”, while category C relates to “other indecent images” that could include children “posing in their underwear with a sexual element to it”, Mr Steer told the court.

There were no category A images, the court heard, which relates to penetrative sex. Some of the images, which were created between June 19 and July 3 2019, appeared to have been edited, which Mr Steer called “unusual”.

The images had text added to them, which said “Rape the c***, rape it now” and “I won’t tell anyone, anon. Please let me SUCC”.

Mr Steer said the words, text and font used were similar to that on some of the racist images found, but that he could not say for certain that this meant they had been edited by the computer owner.

Sam Imrie has been charged with posting statements on social media platform Telegram suggesting he was going to carry out an attack on the Fife Islamic Centre in Glenrothes, Fife.

The 24-year-old has also been accused of planning to stream live footage of “an incident”, and that he took, or permitted to be taken or made, indecent photographs of children.

Among other charges, Mr Imrie is accused of being in possession of neo-nazi, anti-semitic and anti-muslim material and extreme pornography.

He denies all of the nine charges against him, three of which come under the Terrorism Act.

The trial, before Lord Mulholland, continues.