Colin McNeil, a 46-year-old resident of Leeds, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for terrorism offenses at Sheffield Crown Court on Friday, the United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced.
McNeil ran websites that glorified Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and neo-Nazis, as well as contemporary racist mass killers, including Brenton Tarrant - who was responsible for the murder of 51 people in and around Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.
CPS said that while McNeil did not produce the material, he created a well-known platform for it to be spread to people “inclined towards terrorism.”
McNeil’s websites were so well-known that CPS claimed it helped inspire 18-year-old Payton Gendron to murder 10 people in a mass shooting at a grocery store in the United States in 2022. Investigators confirmed that Grendron liked content on the site and left racist comments.
In addition to airing his own racist beliefs, McNeil used the site to raise donations from some of the sites’ 18,061 members.
Hundreds of thousands of pictures and videos were uploaded to the sites, with members being able to contribute material for a $50 charge.
McNeil pleaded guilty to four offenses of disseminating a terrorist publication at Sheffield Crown Court on April 11, 2024, and was sentenced on Friday to seven years imprisonment.
Bethan David, Head of the CPS Counter Terrorism Division, said, “Colin McNeil allowed his websites to operate as propaganda platforms for far-right terrorist material.
“He profited from the sites in the form of donations from users, and it is clear that others were inspired by the hateful and racist material they were able to access online – including those from overseas.
“McNeil’s actions were quite deliberate; he knew full well that there was a risk that terrorism would be encouraged, and yet he permitted access to such material anyway.
“The CPS will always seek to prosecute those who encourage terrorism when our legal test is met.”