Man accused of planning terror attack ‘researched going to Palestine to fight Jews’

She said: “He regularly expressed a wish to kill Jews, for example, using the terminology ‘the pillagers, the big noses and the money’.

“He suggested going to Palestine to fight Jews, and he’s searched for how to volunteer for Hamas from the UK and how to get to Palestine.

“He made a joke about going into a synagogue in a suicide vest.”

Opening the prosecution case, Ms Robinson said the charges faced by Richardson “all relate to his support of Islamic extremism, and his actions in furtherance of that, including, we say, planning a terrorist atrocity”.

The lawyer said one possible target of the defendant was the Meadowhall shopping centre, near Sheffield, which was referenced by Richardson in his social media posts.

Richardson, of Oliver Close, Howden, denies preparing acts of terrorism. He also denies the collection of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism and distributing terrorist publications.

The jury was told that Richardson was arrested on December 19, last year, on Hailgate, in Howden.

Ms Robinson said he told officers: “I’m not a threat.”

She said handwritten notes were found in his backpack, which are accepted to have been written by the defendant.

One note read: “Reach hidden vantage point; Apply gas mask, outfit; Load crossbow; Throw all grenades into crowd; Shoot bystanders; Stab anyone who come close; Do not get taken alive.”

She said another note was a list of ingredients and instructions to make sulphur mustard, sometimes known as mustard gas, and these were later assessed by an expert as “a viable method to create a chemical warfare blister agent”.

Ms Robinson showed the jury videos shared by Richardson on his Instagram accounts, including one with the handle Anglo Jihadi.

One of the videos shown in court was the beheading of American journalist James Foley by the British Islamic State terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John”.

Some of the content was pixilated for the jury.

Ms Robinson said Richardson “stated that he converted to Islam the day after Ramadan”.

She said the defendant “consistently expressed extremist Islamist viewpoints, including wanting to establish the caliphate, as an Islamic paradise”.

The prosecutors said he “expresses the wish to fight and live under Shariah law” and shared Islamic State videos.

She said: “He repeated his desires to conduct jihad and kill infidels, and identified himself as a terrorist.”

Ms Robinson explained how Richardson “proposed Meadowhall shopping centre as a possible attack site” and played a short video he posted on Instagram of the exterior the complex.

This was followed by a brightly coloured clip featuring pictures of rainbows and dolphins, overlain with the words: “How life feels when you finally give up and just start killing people brutally.”

Other video clips shown to the jury included Richardson smashing a statue of Buddha in a garden, describing how it was a “polytheistic idol” and also of him firing a crossbow.

The prosecutor said the crossbow found in his home was bought online by the defendant for £35.95, along with a pack of 10 crossbow bolts.

She said the recipe for mustard gas “has been assessed as viable and potentially fatal for anyone exposed to it” and this substance would be capable of being loaded into a grenade.

Ms Robinson told the jury: “We say the only possible intention in sharing that sort of material, in particular with a group of people who had professed allegiance to the Islamic State, was to encourage terrorist acts, in particular given he had discussed locations, including a UK embassy and Meadowhall.”

She told the jury she anticipated the issues in the trial will include whether the defendant was genuinely preparing acts of terrorism.

Ms Robinson said: “The defendant was not simply a keyboard warrior or fantasist, but a person who was dangerously far down the road to carrying out terrorist acts.”