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A Covid denier from south London has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison after urging people to stage an armed revolt during the pandemic.
The Old Bailey heard 60-year-old Paul Martin was a prolific poster in a Telegram group called The Resistance UK, and called on people to attack the UK’s infrastructure.
Martin hoarded weapons in his flat in South Norwood, including crossbows and pistols, although he was cleared of collecting them for the purposes of terrorism. He was found guilty of encouraging terrorism.
Martin had denied both charges.
He maintained during his trial that his two crossbows were “purely for sport” and that two pistols were the kind “commonly used in fairgrounds”.
Prosecutor Julia Faure-Walker told the court that his messages were designed to “stir up the idea of violent revolt using weapons for his ideological cause”.
The 10-member jury was shown messages he had posted on the Telegram online chat group.
In December 2020 he wrote: “It is a war, you better get ready to smash skulls and destroy evil.”
Martin also called for attacks on 5G and CCTV, saying that if groups attacked the UK’s infrastructure, then the authorities would “be running around like flies”.
“If we do lawful reb (rebellion), we need lots of us.”
“And plenty Alpha men and women… it will be a war, and the police will do everything to stop us.”
Later he told the 8,000 strong group, to which he posted thousands of messages: “You do know if it kicks off lives will be lost on both sides. That’s the reality.”
In one post, Martin wrote: “The simple fact is there is no pandemic, never has been. The main goal was to genocide all they can and enslave the survivors and make the children sterile with poison.”
“Vaccine is a poison designed to kill you off over a short period.”
While giving evidence, he was questioned about his beliefs during the pandemic. He claimed he had feared that people would be forced to have the Covid vaccine.
“I thought we would lose our privilege of consent, that we’d be forced to have it,” he told defence counsel Dominic Thomas.
“That gave me scary thoughts.
“What I see on the news, drag them out of the houses, jab them, all this.”
Martin suggested that he had “fallen down a rabbit hole” during the pandemic and denied he had ever intended to commit any violent acts himself.
He told the court he was “just talking twaddle” and was writing things down as he thought them.
Martin pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing a stun gun at the beginning of his trial but had denied the terrorism charges.
Mr Thomas told the sentencing hearing that his client was eccentric and claimed there was a “schoolboy quality” to his interests.
“Martin had got a job and won the respect of both his manager and customers,” he said.
“He is trying to let go of those previous obsessions. He is keeping stable hours, not drinking, he has taken himself off the internet entirely.”
But in the sentencing, Judge Richard Marks KC said the case involved “recklessness on a very high scale and language of a virulent nature”.
“They [the messages] were posted to people who might have been very impressionable and not unsympathetic to the extreme views you were posting,” he said.
Cdr Dom Murphy, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said “anyone who advocates violence in this way can expect to be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law”.
