"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. I will test you, and if I think you are lying to me, you will suffer. I will be watching you, Ben John, every step of the way. If you let me down you know what will happen" - Judge Timothy Spencer QC, Leicester Crown Court, August 2021.
Read moreExtremism & The Classics
Ben John stood before a jury at Leicester Crown Court. The 21-year-old denied all seven of the charges he faced. John had been arrested around a year and a half earlier after the authorities had raided his flat in January 2020. Counter-Terrorism Policing East Midlands had been monitoring his online activity for some time. Although he was later released, an investigation by a Special Branch of Lincolnshire Police took most of the year with a team of forensic investigators trying to bring to light the dark secrets of Ben John’s digital life…
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