The DailyMail
- Ben John, 21, caught with 67,788 white supremacist and neo-Nazi documents
- He was also found to have downloaded The Anarchist Cookbook on a hard drive
- Was convicted as Leicester Crown Court of terrorism and handed two-year suspended sentence
- Judge Timothy Spencer QC told John to read classic novels so he could test him
A university student who downloaded nearly 70,000 white supremacist and neo-Nazi documents and bomb-making instructions has been instructed to read classic novels including Pride and Prejudice to avoid prison time.
Judge Timothy Spencer QC told Ben John, 21, he could stay out of prison as long as he steered clear of white-supremacy literature and and read books and plays by Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens.
John will have to return to court every four months to be tested on his reading by the judge after avoiding jail ‘by the skin of his teeth’.
On August 11 this year he was found guilty by a jury at Leicester Crown Court of possessing information likely to be useful for preparing an act of terror and the court heard the conviction had a maximum jail sentence of 15 years.
But Judge Spencer concluded his crime was likely to be ‘an act of teenage folly’ and an isolated incident.
He told John at the sentencing hearing today: ‘You are a lonely individual with few if any true friends.’
He added John was ‘highly susceptible’ to recruitment by others more prone to action but said: ‘I am not of the view that harm was likely to have been caused.’
He made John promise him not to research any more right-wing materials.
The judge then asked him: ‘Have you read Dickens? Austen? Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
‘Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.
‘On January 4 you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it.’
