A left-wing anarchist who said he wanted to kill at least 50 politicians has been found guilty of terrorism offences after compiling and sharing a bomb-making manual.
Jacob Graham, 20, a computer science student at Hugh Baird College who modelled himself on Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, dedicated his manual, called the “Freedom Encyclopaedia”, to “terrorists past and future, anarchists etc”.
Manchester crown court was told that Graham bought chemicals on the internet and conducted experiments in his back garden before burying some of the ingredients in Formby Woods, a nature reserve near his Liverpool home, recording the location so he could return to the cache.
The court was told that Graham, who used the name “Destro the Destroyer” and communicated with like-minded extremists using a gaming platform called Discord, had a 3D printer and the designs necessary to create a gun.
He began writing a document in May 2022 called “My Plan” in which he said he wanted to kill at least 50 people by attacking government buildings and politicians’ houses and that he was planning a bombing campaign that would end in a shooting spree with a 3D-printed gun.
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He also made 138 videos, to be released on the day of an attack, in which he demonstrated explosives and talked about “Judgment Day” and “standing up for working-class people”.
When Graham was arrested on May 26 last year, police found several chemicals, each of which could be used as ingredients in various explosive mixtures. On the wall in his bedroom Graham had printed out a picture of a car bomb exploding with the words: “Make politicians afraid to start their cars again.”
Graham was found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism by writing the Freedom Encyclopaedia, and of disseminating terrorist publications and possession of documents useful for terrorism. He was cleared of planning a terrorist attack.
Graham told police he was “left-wing” but “more like an anarchist” adding: “I don’t like the idea of a central control and I don’t really like the monarchy.”
His ideal government would be the size of “Merseyside or Liverpool”, he said, adding that he supported the Green Party and was an “environmentalist” who did not like the way that “corporations act and how they damage the earth”.
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“I think it is fair to say I was quite anti-government,” Graham told the court. “I didn’t agree with the idea of it — the way certain things were handled, the pandemic, the cost of living.
“I didn’t agree with a group of small people being able to make decisions that affect a mass.”
Graham, who lived with his mother, sister and sister’s boyfriend, made video diaries in which he recorded himself wearing a headset and speaking into the camera from his bedroom, with a teddy bear on the bed behind him. Wearing a T-shirt and glasses, he said at one point: “I’ve got everything I need to start my revolution.”
In a video on June 21, Graham took out a machete with a red handle and tapped the blade, saying: “Can’t end my life yet, I have so much carnage to commit.”
In another video made in his bedroom on August 9, Graham stated: “If terrorism is standing up for what you think is right, standing up for the working-class people of this country, most of us can’t afford to heat our homes or afford food, there needs to be someone to fix this problem. It is my responsibility to do this.”
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“I will be a homegrown terrorist because I was born on British soil. If they want to call me a justice warrior or a hero, call me that. If they want to call me scum, call me that because I won’t be here to listen to all of it.”
Investigators are believed to have come across his online activity, leading to his arrest.
The court heard that Graham came to idolise Kaczynski after watching a Netflix series called Manhunt, and pledged to “finish what he started”.
From a remote cabin in Montana, Kaczynski carried out a 17-year letter bombing campaign, in which he targeted technology academics at universities, killing three people and injuring 23.
Graham will be sentenced on March 18.