A-Level student from Swindon accused of sharing terrorist documents
18 year-old Malakai Wheeler says he did it in case of "social disorder".
A Swindon teenager, accused of sharing terrorism documents, says he downloaded instructions for making weapons because they could be useful in case of “social disorder”.
Malakai Wheeler, from Stamford Close in Toothill, is currently on trial accused of having various terrorist documents.
Today, Wheeler told the Court he downloaded weapon instructions, in case they were needed in social chaos caused by Covid or a foreign invasion.
The 18-year-old's on trial at Winchester Crown Court accused of holding copies of the Terrorist Handbook, the Anarchist's Handbook and a document called Homemade Detonators.
He's also accused of sharing 92 documents and 35 images of items online, that could be used to perform acts of terrorism - like smoke grenades.
The defendant told the court he had not read all of the documents and only downloaded them as part of a batch of files in order to archive them because he believed they were going to be removed from the internet by the social media platform Telegram.
Explaining why he downloaded instructions for making weapons, he said they could have been useful in the case of "social disorder".
He said: "Weapons could be useful if there was a serious emergency. Covid showed things could come out of the blue. It could be an economic problem or a foreign invasion - things can just pop out of nowhere."
Wheeler said he also accessed a file called 100 Deadly Skills because he felt they could be useful in such circumstances, with their descriptions of techniques to escape from a hotel or to "stop yourself from drowning if you were tied up in the water".
Wheeler said he read one of the documents, Allied Sabotage Devices, because of a "historical interest" in the Second World War and found it "mildly interesting".
He said he had no intention of acting on any of the documents and denied downloading the files to prepare acts of terrorism or to encourage or assist others to do so.
The defendant denied having white supremacist or antisemitic views despite using a Nazi swastika as part of his Telegram profile image and creating a library channel of documents headed National Socialism - a reference to the Nazis.
He accepted downloading a file called Werewolves Of The Third Reich - in reference to a division of the SS in the war.
And he accepted being photographed in a skull mask and doing a Nazi salute.
Describing his links to national socialism, he said: "I have an interest and sympathy with some of it but not all of it."
He said he accessed videos, from the terrorist group calling itself Islamic State, showing people being killed out of "morbid curiosity", adding: "It's not something you see in every day life."
He denies all six charges against him and the trial continues.