Romford man among duo convicted of terrorism offences

A man from Romford is among the duo convicted of terrorism offences for hosting an online podcast that encouraged listeners to attack ethnic minorities.

Tyrone Patten-Walsh, along with Christopher Gibbons of South London, reportedly aired homophobic, racist anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and misogynistic views through their podcast.

They ran 21 episodes of the show between March 3, 2019 and February 9, 2020 that were viewed more than 152,000 times by their over 1,000 subscribers.

A spokesperson for Met Police said the duo also occasionally encouraged followers to “got out and commit acts of terrorist violence”.

Gibbons, they said, had created an online library containing more than 500 videos of “extreme right-wing related speeches and propaganda documents”.

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The content in the library and podcast was assessed by officers from Met’s specialist Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit and some of the material was found to be in breach of terrorism legislation.

Patten-Walsh and Gibbons were arrested on May 18 in 2021, but denied a charge of inciting terrorism on the podcast.

They were granted bail on the condition that they live at their given addresses and surrender their passports to the police in Oct 2021.

With the help of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, they were each charged on August 16, 2021.

The two went on trial for eight counts of encouraging acts of terrorism, and Gibbons also went on trial for two counts of dissemination of terrorist publications.

They were found guilty of all charges and have now been convicted following a trial at the Kingston Crown Court which concluded on Friday (July 7).

Commander Dominic Murphy, who leads the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said that during their investigation detectives reviewed “hundreds of hours of material”.

As a result, he said, a “compelling case” was presented at court which resulted in their convictions.

He added that the defendants thought that the fact they were “airing hateful views and advocating terrorist acts in plain sight”, somehow gave them some “legitimacy and meant they wouldn’t face any consequences”.

He said: “They were wrong, and both our investigation and a jury has found that they sought to encourage terrorism in how they expressed their abhorrent extreme right-wing views.”

He urged anyone who came across extremist content online to report it to police as information from public can be “vitally important” in fight against terrorism.

Terrorist content, he said, can be reported anonymously online  or via the “iREPORTit” app.