London court increases far-right terrorist's jail term to 5 years

London: The white-supremacist terrorist, who shared bomb-making instructions online and celebrated the Christchurch Mosque massacre, got 18 months added to his jail term by appeal court here, Arab News reported. The 42-month jail he got earlier does not reflect his online racialisation crimes, through the Telegram messaging app, the appeal court judges noted.

The convicted man of 38, Michael Nugent, had shared manuals that showed how to create homemade bombs and firearms in Telegram. He had described the 2019 March attacks on two mosques in New Zealand as a "game-changer".

In June, a London court sentenced him to imprisonment of 42 months, convicting him for terror offences. On Friday, after the UK attorney challenged his sentence, arguing that the penalty was not harsh enough considering the seriousness of his crimes, Micheal's sentence was increased to five years.

Arab News reports that Nugent was said to have "honoured" right-wing terrorists such as Brenton Tarrant, who shot and killed 51 people and injured 40 in the Christchurch mosques attack. Tarrant live-streamed the incident on Facebook.

The Independent reported that Nugent created a video celebrating the attacks marking its first anniversary. He wrote in his diary that ethnic minorities should be "sent home", 'sterilised", and "Terrorism is the only way out".

Nugent was caught after he passed firearms making instructions to an undercover officer who joined his channel of 2 lakh members. Nugent's defence on his crime was that his terrorist actions were out of deteriorating mental health. But London's Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command testified that Nugent freely shared his extremist views with others through the messaging app.