High-achieving neo-Nazi teenager given suspended sentence

An A-star student said to have fallen down “the rabbit hole of the internet” to become a neo-Nazi has been sentenced after pleading guilty to fourteen terror charges and two charges of possessing indecent images of children.

Harry Vaughan, who is eighteen, was given a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years. He was also ordered to attend a rehabilitation programme.

Mr Justice Sweeney, handing down the sentence at the Old Bailey, said: “You are a dangerous offender.”

Mr Vaughan is said to have begun taking an interest in Satanic neo-Nazism at the age of fourteen, unbeknownst to his parents, who were bewildered when he was arrested some years later.

He had “every advantage that could have been afforded to him,” according to his barrister, having been educated at a prestigious grammar school and received four A-star grades in summer exams.

In 2018, he applied to join the System Resistance Network, a white supremacist successor to National Action, which the Government proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2016 following a long campaign by Campaign Against Antisemitism and others. He wrote at the time that “there is nothing I wouldn’t do to further the cause”.

He was arrested at home on 19th June last year in a counter-terrorism operation against a far-right online forum called Fascist Forge. His laptop was seized, revealing documents relating to antisemitism, Satanism and neo-Nazism, as well as as far-right terrorist book, bomb-making manuals and materials from the Sonnenkrieg Division, a neo-Nazi organisation that was proscribed by the Government this year.

Police also discovered videos of child abuse, leading to the charges of possession of indecent images of children.

The Head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command reportedly said that the case “illustrates it is possible for any young person to be susceptible to radicalisation,” adding: “Harry Vaughan is an intelligent young man who was predicted A-star grades and aspiring to study computing at university. Yet, online, he was an enthusiastic participant of right-wing terrorist forums.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has been monitoring and acting against the threat from the far-right for years and continues to support the authorities following suit.

Image credit: Metropolitan Police