Man charged with terror offences over 'anarchist website'

but,,, what website?

via MSN by Lizzie Dearden

Man charged with terror offences over ‘anarchist website that published bomb-making instructions

A man accused of running an anarchist website that published bomb-making instructions has appeared in court.

Toby Shone, 43, has been charged with three terror offences and four drug offences.

He appeared at a hearing at the Old Bailey via video-link from HMP Wandsworth on Friday.

Prosecution barrister Lee Ingham told the court: “The allegations relate to the running of a pro-anarchy website which included possession and putting instructions on a website of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and the like.”

Mr Shone, of Drybrook in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, was arrested on 10 February.

He has been charged with providing a service that enabled people to access publications, intending the effect to be encouragement of acts of terrorism.

Mr Shone is also accused of inviting people to provide funding that could be used for the purposes of terrorism, and possession of material useful to a terrorist.

He has been charged with possession of Class A and B drugs with intent to supply, producing a class B drug and a further count of class AA drug possession.

Mr Shone was not asked to enter a plea and was remanded in custody ahead of a hearing at Bristol Crown Court on 4 June. His trial is scheduled to start on 6 October.

There are 8 Comments

They believe in nothing and have no idea what to do with people but put them in cages.

How'd he get caught?

We know Hammond and Dread Pirate Roberts slipped opsec and leaked real email addresses to undercovers.

If there is a hell, surely it's aspects of the internet. It's a Skinner box used to keep everyone rationally ordered, eternally looped in its right place.

speculating on the internet before the trial has started is not a good idea, folks.

that said, yes, we have cause for concern. be careful out there.

I mean, there's a lot of info about making bombs on the internet, not much point of drawing attention to yourself as an anarchist

We, the ITS Feral Revenge Cell, claim this vendetta action in the name of Wild Nature

It worries me that the case is not appearing in ABC yet. I suspect he is being held incommunicado and is not allowed to communicate with other anarchists or radicals. This would be officially on "risk grounds" but is part of a strategy of network disruption. He will now be under intense pressure to plead guilty or plea-bargain on lesser charges. Wandsworth is a Category B (medium-security) prison but last I heard all prisoners in the UK are in solitary confinement "because of COVID".

Yes, let's not say anything too definite/prejudicial before the trial (if there IS a trial... there is just as likely to be a "suicide", charges dropped or plea deal), unless we get clearer evidence it's a frame-up attempt. He's officially "innocent until proven guilty" and the evidence against him won't be revealed until the trial; it's illegal in the UK to declare someone as guilty before they're tried and it is also conceivable that the state is using gag laws to prevent the media from knowing details revealed in court, as often happens in "terrorism" cases. Suffice for now to say: I do not know of a British anarchist website which publishes bomb-making instructions. There are two insu sites which have been inactive since October and December respectively. Neither of them has how-to sections. Bristol police have a track record of intimidating anarchists and have previously threatened Bristol Indymedia over communiques published on their newswire. And the case against Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan in the UK and US was partly based on materials which had been uploaded to the site by third parties, were thus in its database, but had not even been published. So it's quite plausible the "instructions" will turn out to be descriptions in a communique which the site reproduced (which is not to prejudge anything). By the way, there is no such thing as "Class AA drugs" within British law, this is either bullshit or a mistype in the original source (which is a liberal broadsheet paper: the fact that the tabloids aren't all over the case is suspicious). Class A drugs (the worst category) includes relatively innocuous drugs such as LSD, magic mushrooms and ecstasy, and "intent to supply" just means having a large enough stash that it exceeds arbitrary limits set by the state on what they take to be possession for personal use; they don't have to prove any actual intent to supply. "Producing class B drugs" encompasses things like growing your own weed. There's been a lot of harassment of street-level dealing during lockdowns. We don't know if he was initially arrested/framed for the alleged political dissent or the alleged drug activities. There's a few scenarios of how pigs could access someone's computer data: it might be unencrypted or turned-on at the time of the raid, they might crack the password, or they might blackmail the person into revealing the password using the RIP Act. However, the charges under the RIP Act for refusing to turn over passwords are less serious than the ones he's facing. There's been a history of similar persecution in the UK: the GANDALF trial against Green Anarchist and ALF News in the 1990s, the frame-up against SHAC and then Antifa come to mind.

Meant to add: if it's a dodgy frame-up case, it's probably in his and our interests to politicise it ASAP, like Pablo Hasel, rather than letting the state keep it quiet (c.f. how they backed down over "Tommy Robinson" when his fans rioted). We want this to be a free speech cause celebre like GANDALF or the Heathrow 15, not a quiet frame-up like SHAC.

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