David Copeland

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David Copeland (* 15. May 1976 in Isleworth, London Borough of Hounslow ) is a British neo-Nazi , who within 13 days in April 1999 in London a series of three nail bomb attacks perpetrated that against blacks , immigrants from Bangladesh as well as against homosexuals directed . Previously, Copeland , who became known as the nail bomber from London , had temporarily been a member of the British National Party (BNP) and then joined the National Socialist Movement . After contradicting medical reports on his culpability, Copeland was sentenced to six times life imprisonment in 2000 and cannot be released until 2049 at the earliest after a later decision by the highest court.

Childhood and youth

David Copeland, whose father is an engineer and his mother a housewife, the longest lived his childhood with his parents and two brothers in Yateley in the county of Hampshire . At the Yateley School there, he graduated in 1992 with seven General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

After his arrest in 1999, he reported to the psychiatrists who examined him about sadistic fantasies that he developed at the age of twelve. One of these ideas involved killing his classmates. From the age of 13 he began to get enthusiastic about National Socialism . At 16, he dreamed of a tall, handsome and powerful commander of the SS with docile sex - slaves to be men tortured and murdered. Before the age of 19 he developed a fascination for violence.

After school he had a number of jobs that he lost again. He blamed immigrants for the difficult labor market situation. He also committed petty crimes and became addicted to alcoholism and drug addiction . His father was finally able to find him a job as an engineering assistant on the London Underground .

British National Party

Copeland joined the BNP in May 1997. On September 15 of that year he took part as a steward in a closed party event and got to know its leadership. After clashes with counter-demonstrators in front of the venue, Copeland and the injured then party chairman John Tyndall were photographed standing next to each other. During this time, Copeland read the novel The Turner Diaries , written by William Luther Pierce , and learned from instructions in a so-called terrorist handbook he had downloaded from the Internet how to make bombs from fireworks with alarm clocks as time detonators. Copeland left the BNP, which did not seem radical enough to him because it refused to support a paramilitary struggle.

National Socialist Movement

In 1998 he joined the National Socialist Movement led by David Myatt , which was considered the political arm of the militant organization Combat 18 . That same year, he had a general practitioner examine him, whom he said he felt like he was losing his mind, and who prescribed him an antidepressant . Several weeks before the attacks he carried out, he became the National Socialist Movement regional leader for the Hampshire area .

attacks

Copeland made the bombs with explosives from fireworks, around which he placed up to 1,500 pieces of ten centimeter long nails.

Brixton Market

Copeland's first attack was on Saturday, April 17, 1999, in Brixton , London , where many black people live. He put the bomb inside a new, upscale Head brand, dark blue gym bag , focused it, and placed it in the busy Brixton Market that afternoon . He was recorded by surveillance cameras .

At around 5:15 p.m., three young men discovered the bag at a bus stop near Electric Avenue. The bystanders began to discuss what to do with the bag. Some passers-by looked inside, saw wires and suspected that it was a bomb. At 5:18 p.m. the bag was handed over to the market trader George Jones, who carried it across Electric Avenue and placed it on a pallet in front of the Iceland supermarket there . Jones called the police on his cell phone. A group of more than twelve people had formed to discuss the bag. The rumor that a bomb was nearby caused some visitors to Brixton Market to leave the square. One of the bystanders took the device out of his pocket and placed it on the pallet. Another listened to it and said he could hear a tick. The Iceland market security officer inspected the device and notified the Iceland market manager, who called the police at 5:21 pm.

According to the operator of a fruit and vegetable stall in Brixton Market, his 15-year-old employee Gary Shilling took the device and put it in a trash can on the main road while according to other sources it remained on the pallet. Two police patrol cars arrived at 5:29 pm. The police tried to encourage those present to flee. The bomb exploded shortly afterwards at 5:30 p.m.

At least 45 people were injured, many seriously from flying nails and glass. A 23 month old boy had a nail driven through his forehead into the brain. Two men, aged 61 and 52, were at risk of permanent blindness, and two other people suffered serious head injuries.

Hanbury Street

Copeland originally intended to direct his second attack on the following Saturday, April 24, 1999, against a well-known street market on Brick Lane in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets , the center of the area in east London inhabited by Bengali immigrants. Little did he know at the time that this market was on Sundays and not Saturdays, which made the street less busy. Because Copeland did not want to change the time fuse, he instead left the bomb on Hanbury Street , where it exploded. 13 people were injured.

Old Compton Street

The third and last bomb, which was again in a sports bag, was placed by Copeland on the evening of the following Friday, April 30, 1999, on the building of the Admiral Duncan Pub on Old Compton Street , the center of the lesbian and gay district in London Soho . The restaurants and streets were very busy because the bank holiday weekend began that evening . Three people died in the bomb explosion. A total of 79 people were injured, many of them seriously, and four limbs had to be amputated .

arrest

The Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch recognized Copeland on the video footage from Brixton. The images were widely publicized on April 29, prompting Copeland to move his attack on the Admiral Duncan Pub forward to Friday evening. Paul Mifsud, a work colleague of Copeland, recognized him on the recordings and notified the police about 80 minutes before the bomb exploded in the restaurant. Copeland was found and arrested by police early the next morning in his rented room on Sunnybank Road, Cove, Hampshire. Immediately after opening the door for the police officers, he admitted that he single-handedly carried out the three attacks. He showed them his room, in which two Nazi flags were hanging on the wall, along with a collection of photographs and newspaper reports about the attacks.

Court process

Copeland's state of mind was assessed at Broadmoor Hospital in Bracknell Forest . Five psychiatrist said that he at one paranoid schizophrenia suffer, but the prosecutors were not ready to apply for debt to intentional homicide ( manslaughter Voluntary ) to accept because of diminished criminal responsibility. A sixth psychiatrist said Copeland had a personality disorder which did not reduce his guilty capacity enough to avoid charges of murder under Anglo-Welsh criminal law . Copeland's pre-trial response to a letter from detective writer Bernard O'Mahoney , who posed as a woman named Patsy Scanlon to him in the hopes of extracting a confession from Copeland, served prosecutors as additional evidence of Copeland's state of mind.

The jury also refused to accept the defense’s plea of ​​reduced guilt and found Copeland guilty of triple murder and triple bombing offenses. On June 20, 2000, Copeland was sentenced to six times life imprisonment. On March 2, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that Copeland should remain in prison for at least 50 years, excluding release before 2049. Even after a possible release from prison, the judge said he would have to remain on probation for the rest of his life and possibly have to return to prison.

Motifs

Copeland insisted that he acted alone and that he had not discussed his plans with anyone else. During interrogation by the police, he claimed to have neo-Nazi views and spoke of his desire to spread fear and start a racial war. He told the police:

“My main intent was to spread fear, resentment and hatred throughout this country, it was to cause a racial war. […] If you've read The Turner Diaries , you know the year 2000 there'll be the uprising and all that, racial violence on the streets. My aim was political. It was to cause a racial war in this country. There'd be a backlash from the ethnic minorities, then all the white people will go out and vote BNP. "

“My main intention was to spread fear, resentment and hatred in this country in order to start a race war. [...] If you 've read The Turner Diaries , you know that in 2000 there will be a riot and all that, racial violence in the streets. My goal was political. I wanted to start a race war in this country. There would be a backlash from the ethnic minorities, then all the white people would go out and vote for the BNP. "

- David Copeland : Confession

After his arrest, Copeland wrote to journalist Graeme McLagan denying he had schizophrenia and claiming that the Zog ( Zionist Occupied Government ) drugged him to sweep him under the carpet. He wrote:

“I bomb the blacks, Pakis, degenerates. I would have bombed the Jews as well if I'd got a chance. "

“I bomb the blacks, Pakistanis and degenerates. I would have bombed the Jews if I had the opportunity. "

- David Copeland : Confession

When the police asked him why he attacked black people and Asians, he replied:

"Because I don't like them, I want them out of this country, I believe in the master race."

“Because I don't like her, I want her out of this country. I believe in the master race . "

- David Copeland : Testimony to the police

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrew Buncombe, Terri Judd, Jason Bennett: 'Hate-filled' nailbomber is jailed for life ( December 1, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ), Independent , June 30, 2000
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Nick Hopkins, Sarah Hall: David Copeland: a quiet introvert, obsessed with Hitler and bombs , The Guardian , June 30, 2000
  3. ↑ Bomber's Nazi dreams , Guardian , June 16, 2000
  4. ↑ Nick Ryan: Into a World of Hate. A Journey among the Extreme Right , Routledge, 2004, p. 83
  5. ^ Snapped at the BNP Bash. He met with right-wing activists to celebrate party's 15th anniversary, Mirror , May 25, 1999, quoted from Thefreelibrary.com
  6. ↑ a b Fred Attewill: London nail bomber must serve at least 50 years , Guardian , March 2, 2007
  7. ↑ a b 1999: Dozens hurt in London bomb blast , BBC , 2008
  8. ^ Rory Carroll, 'The device was on the pallet, ticking' , Guardian , April 19, 1999
  9. ↑ Tony Thompson, Mark Honigsbaum, Yvonne Ridley: Nail bomb injures 48 in Brixton blast , Guardian , April 18, 1999
  10. ^ The London nail bombs , Guardian , 2011
  11. ^ Rory Carroll, Will Woodward: Bomb survivors tell of bloody chaos , Guardian , April 19, 1999
  12. ↑ Car bomb explodes in London's Brick Lane , Press Association , April 24, 1999
  13. ↑ Stuart Millar, 'We're at war and if that means more bombs, so be it ...' , Guardian , April 27, 1999
  14. ↑ Stuart Millar: Anti-terror police seek White Wolf racist over bombs , Guardian , April 28, 1999
  15. ^ Nail bomb explosion at London pub kills two , Guardian , April 30, 1999
  16. ↑ Mark Honigsbaum, Denis Campbell, Tony Thompson, Sarah Ryle, Nicole Veash, Burhan Wazir: Bomb factory man seized as death toll rises , Guardian , May 2, 1999
  17. ^ Gay community hit by nail bomb , Guardian , May 5, 1999
  18. ↑ Jeevan Vasagar: Celebration did ended in deaths of three friends , Guardian , 1 July 2000
  19. ↑ Julia Stuart: Bernard O'Mahoney: Helping to secure convictions , Independent , September 18, 2001
  20. ↑ Nick Hopkins: Bomber gets six life terms , Guardian , July 1, 2000
  21. ↑ Panorama . The Nailbomber. June 30, 2000 ( bbc.co.uk [accessed September 24, 2013]).
  22. ↑ a b Profile: Copeland the killer. BBC News, June 30, 2000, accessed September 24, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Copeland, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English right-wing extremist assassin
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH Isleworth, London Borough of Hounslow