Mentally ill extremist from Borehamwood who created online library handed supervision order
Joseph Cope was aged 16 and 17 when he used social media to encourage terrorism, the Old Bailey had heard
A young man who created an online “library” of extreme right-wing material encouraging violent attacks on racial groups has been handed a two-year supervision order.
Joseph Cope was aged 16 and 17 when he used social media to encourage terrorism, the Old Bailey had heard.
Since the alleged offences between September 2021 and June 2022, Cope’s mental health deteriorated to the extent that he was found unfit to stand trial.
However, following a trial of issue in February, Cope, now aged 20, was found by a jury to have committed the acts alleged against him.
On Friday (17 April 2026), Cope attended the Old Bailey by videolink from his home and was handed a two-year supervision order by Judge Mark Lucraft KC.
Previously, the court heard Cope had published posts and images on a Telegram channel titled Serano’s Division.
Among the posts was a link to a separate Telegram channel called the Great Library Of Thule, on which Cope had uploaded hundreds of extreme right-wing documents.
Prosecutor Dan Pawson-Pounds KC had said some of the documents explained how to cause mass public disorder and incited violence against racial groups.
By creating the link to the channel, Cope was effectively “providing a service to others to access those documents”, he said.
Hundreds of similar documents were found on the defendant’s computer which were likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, jurors were told.
The extremist material was uncovered following Cope’s arrest at his home in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, in June 2022.
In a search of his bedroom, police seized a number of extreme far-right books and a black snood with a skeletal jaw depicted on it, associated with the extreme right-wing.
The defendant largely declined to comment in police interviews.
Cope was charged with three counts of encouraging terrorism, one of dissemination of terrorist publications on Telegram, and a single specimen count of possessing information useful to a terrorist – the White Resistance Manual.
At the hearing on Friday, Mr Pawson-Pounds argued a supervision order was necessary because of the nature and length of Cope’s activities.
He pointed out Cope’s extreme right-wing mindset at the time was consistent with “neo-Nazi militantism” and “accelerationism”.
As his behaviour had been linked to his mental health problems, a supervision order would “provide some comfort” in relation to that, the prosecutor asserted.