A Scottish neo-Nazi who amassed an armoury at his home with which to launch an attack on the LGBTQ+ community, is facing a lengthy jail sentence after being found guilty of terrorism charges.

Alan Edward, a former journalist who idealised Adolf Hitler and called Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik – who killed 77 people in 2011 – a saint, was found guilty by a jury at the High Court in Stirling on Monday (16 September), after an 11-day trial.

The charges included four under the Terrorism Act: inviting support for a proscribed organisation, possession of weaponry, ammunition and equipment for the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts, encouraging terrorism, and circulating terrorist publications. He also faced charges of racism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial and breach of the peace.

He denied all the charges.

Edward was also found guilty of producing and supplying cannabis and possessing a stun gun, which he had offered to admit before the trial began, according to The Sun.

The jurors heard that 54-year-old Edward, of 29 Wholequarter Avenue, Redding, Falkirk, held a “a set of ideals with a neo-Nazi outlook, incorporating notions of white supremacy, the notion of racial purity of whites, racism, antisemitism, and hatred of homosexuals and transgender people.”

In social media posts, Edward called gay people “plague carriers” and said of trans people: “We used to sterilise mental defectives. We now just convince them they’re trans so they ask to be sterilised.”

Edward, who had close to 28,000 social media followers, had engaged with a fellow neo-Nazi on WhatsApp, discussing attacking people at a local LGBTQ+ group. “It’s clearly time to hunt the f*****s down and beat them,” the messages read.

“They have been pushing their luck for years, now they will pay in blood. It’s time to kill… there is no place for them in this world. We should get masked up and go do a few of them in at their little gay club.”

The prosecution branded the exchanges “incredibly sinister”.

Edward also shared memes about the death of George Floyd, who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020, and called someone “a Black animal” and “a n***o savage”.

He called Jewish people “satan’s filthy k***s” and wanted to send them “back to hell where they belong”. He shared an image of a devil holding a pitchfork shaped like a menorah and posted that COVID-19 was a result of Jewish people, and that Jews “instigated World War II”.

In other messages, he said “communists belong in wood chippers”, it was “time to fire up the ovens and step on the gas”, and “the quickest way to someone’s heart is with a high-power 7.62mm round”.

When Edward’s address was raided by armed police in 2022, they found a plethora of weapons including machetes, knuckledusters, more than a dozen knives – some of which featured Nazi insignia – a crossbow, a catapult, an extendable baton, a Samurai sword and a stun gun, alongside a SS-style skull mask.

Prosecutors said the collection of weapons amounted to “an armoury”.

However, Edward claimed that was a weapons collector, and that they were for “outdoor pursuits”. He also said that a ring he was wearing when arrested, described by an expert as a symbol of the far right, was “an esoteric symbol [of] life force”.

Detective chief superintendent David Ferry, the head of the Police Scotland’s counter terrorism unit, said: “Edward shared extreme racist and homophobic content online with the aim of stirring up hatred and spreading fear and alarm. He also had a clear fascination with weapons and had amassed an array of items which could clearly pose a significant risk to the public. 

“Promoting terrorism and extremism and sharing material that could endanger the public has no place in our society and Police Scotland will not hesitate to investigate this kind of behaviour both on and off-line.

“We are committed to combatting terrorism, and help and support from the public is vital. Anyone with information on a terrorist threat should contact Police Scotland on 101 immediately.”

Remanding Edward in custody, judge Fiona Tait deferred sentence until 21 October at the High Court in Edinburgh.