Fife loner and proud white nationalist Sam Imrie idolised mass-murderers Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant.
It was this twisted hero worship that thrust him into the centre of one of Police Scotland’s biggest counter-terrorism operations.
A jury ruled on Wednesday that he had encouraged acts of terrorism and had made a record of information that could be useful to someone who was committing acts of terrorism.
Here, we shine a spotlight on the life of the young Fife loner, whose bedroom became a shrine to white nationalism, and the detectives who pulled out all the stops to bring him to justice.
Neon Hitler
In a darkened corner of the internet, there’s a place where young men exchange their home-made terrorist fan art.
Nightmarish neon images of fascist leaders and Nazi symbolism populate the so-called FashWave Artists section of social media platform Telegram.
In one disturbing post, mass-murderers Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant are presented as saints.
In another, Taylor Swift is pictured with swastika sunglasses.
It was in this chat room that 22-year-old Sam Imrie posted what police perceived to be threats to burn down a local mosque.
Hate-fuelled ideologies
White nationalist Imrie – he rejects the term ‘white supremacist’ – had been harbouring extreme far-right thoughts for several years.
An unemployed loner, Imrie lived with his mum, brother and younger sister at an ex-council house in Glenrothes.
His family may not have been aware of his social media tirade against the Fife Islamic Centre, but they were conscious of his hate-fuelled ideologies.
Mum Joyce, 50, said that her son had an “infatuation with Hitler” and admired former US President Donald Trump.
She only needed to step inside his gloss-red bedroom to get a glimpse of his extremist world view.
His ramshackle room was a shrine to alt-right ideology, with two Swastikas drawn on his wall in crayon.
Alongside them, the number 1488: A well known white supremacist hate symbol which refers to a 14-word slogan about securing the future for white children, and 88 symbolising Heil Hitler (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet).
Lying around was his prized collection of hunting knives and axes.
They included blades disguised as credit cards.
He also owned a printed out copy of a 74-page manifesto by Australian killer Tarrant, who had just weeks earlier slaughtered 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand.
Police believe it was Imrie’s hero worship of Tarrant and Breivik that prompted his hate-fuelled rant against Fife’s Muslim population, which jurors ruled could encourage terrorism.
Just weeks before he shared his plan to fellow fascists online, Imrie changed his public-facing Facebook profile to Hitler.
Underneath, he shared the words: “Seeing Muslims suffer”.
Imrie told detectives he had been drinking heavily when he uploaded a sporadic series of incriminating messages and videos to Telegram.
Two days earlier on July 2, he had been caught on CCTV stocking up on booze from the Premier Store in Glenrothes’ Culzean Place.
Across three visits in just a matter of hours, he bought a case of Tennents lager, two bottles of MD 20/20 and a bottle of Cactus Jack.
In the afternoon of July 4, security cameras at the Fife Islamic Centre, Poplar Road, captured Imrie parking outside.
Mosque ‘reconnaissance’
In the footage, he is seen getting out of his car and silently filming the building from all angles on his mobile phone.
Imrie broadcast film of his trip live to his Telegram followers.
He told them he would burn the building down using petrol.
A short time later, Imrie filmed himself driving to – he claimed – another place of worship.
The clip is shot from inside the car, facing out onto the street, as bizarre bagpipe music blares on the stereo.
For Senior Investigating Officer Jackie Gilfillan, alarm bells were ringing.
She said: “What drew our attention to that one is the Magic Tree air freshener hanging from the front rear-view mirror, the petrol canister on the passenger seat and the loud music in the background.
“That video struck me as having significant similarities to the video livestreamed by Brenton Tarrant when he carried out his attacks in New Zealand.”
Imrie drove about three miles to the derelict Strathmore Lodge on the edge of the Fife village of Thorton, colliding with a parked vehicle en route.
There, he set fire to a door and filmed the flames. He pretended to the FashWave group’s near-300 members that he was putting his plan into action.
Met Police raise alarm
The disturbing posts were spotted by Metropolitan Police later that day. Officers immediately alerted their colleagues at Police Scotland.
DI Gilfillan: “The posts on the Telegram chat included significant indications of a desire to carry out an attack with petrol on the Islamic Centre.
“These videos and images were all coupled with significant comments of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish sentiments.”
Investigators were quick to identify Imrie, after running the registration plate of the car spotted on mosque CCTV through their database.
Armed officers swooped on his Colliston Avenue home in the early hours of the following morning.
The property was sealed off for several days while forensic teams carried out a painstaking search inside.
A large piece of tarpaulin was pulled down over the building as the investigation continued.
Detectives identified items from Imrie’s bedroom from some of his videos, including his bed sheets and the collection of bladed weapons.
They also spotted a ring on his bedside table. It was the same Black Sun ring – bearing a Nazi sun-wheel symbol – that he wore in some of his videos.
Imrie was led away for questioning to Police Scotland’s Terrorist Detention Centre in Govan. He was escorted out of his home by armed police, handcuffed and in his pyjamas.
It was the first time he had come to the attention of the law as an adult, although he was reported to the Youth Justice Management Unit for vandalising a bus stop in Glenrothes’ Beaufort Drive in 2013 when he was 16.
He scrawled the words: “F*** Moslems”.
Shocked neighbours said they couldn’t believe he was involved in terrorism.
“That family has lived there for years,” said one resident.
Police interview
At his first police interview, Imrie initially refused to speak.
But later, he began to talk more freely, admitting that he was the person in the video clips and that he had visited the mosque.
He told police that he had uploaded the posts to the Telegram chat room.
DI Gilfillan said: “His explanation was that he had no intention of carrying out an attack and he was seeking some form of notoriety from other persons.
“He said he was heavily under the influence of alcohol, having been drinking for four days.”
Imrie had deleted the messages that morning, and told officers he would never have carried out such an attack.
“During the interview, he indicated he had a white nationalist view point,” said DI Gilfillan. “He said he wanted the best for the white human race.
“Whilst acknowledging the comments he made, he didn’t want to go further in terms of his hatred towards other races. He was more focussed on his white nationalism.”
Although cooperating to a degree, Imrie refused to give police the password to his Apple Mac computer.
Eventually, officers were able to bypass its security system and uncovered a stash of child abuse images.
They also found graphic files of extreme pornography, involving human corpses. The images had been taken at UK mortuaries.
Imrie clammed up when he was asked about them.
Detectives also found video of Imrie setting fire to a gravestone at St Drostan’s Cemetery.
His efforts to burn the seemingly randomly selected headstone were unsuccessful. In the video he appears to burn himself as he torches a bush.
Alone in his room
DI Gilfillan said: “His family indicated he is someone who is socially isolated. He doesn’t have a social circle.
“He very much lives his life in his bedroom and online.
“The online space has been a focus for him. It was the only social interaction we were able to trace in terms of his daily activity.”
She said there was no indication that he had been radicalised by far-right content online, but had been harbouring such views for some years.
Joyce Imrie said she was unaware that her son had been chatting with others in the US about his neo-Nazi views.
“I would describe him as a loner who rarely leaves his room,” she said. “He has no friends that I know of and he has no visitors to the house.
“He has never had a girlfriend that I know of.”
When armed officers descended on their home in the early hours of July 6, Imrie told her: “Aw mum, I’ve done somethings stupid. I’ve pretended to set a mosque on fire.”
“I think my reaction was something along the lines of: Jesus f****** Christ,” Mrs Imrie said.
At the trial, defence solicitor advocate Jim Keegan QC referred to an expert witness, Professor Matthew Feldman, who had studied neo-Nazism, but also the Irish writer Samuel Beckett who had written: “Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.”
Mr Keegan said: “What you have before you is a boy who danced first, danced with fascists, and thought later.”
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