Stafford man who called for ‘killing migrants’ pleads guilty to terrorism offences

A rightwing extremist who called for “killing migrants when they arrive on their boats” has pleaded guilty to terrorism offences.Ivan Jennings, 46, from Stafford, admitted encouraging terrorism between 15 August and 14 November 2024 at Leicester crown court on Monday.He had previously pleaded guilty to dissemination of a terrorism publication at a hearing in August. That charge related to a manifesto written by Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in terror attacks in Norway in 2011.A court previously heard Jennings was a member of a number of extreme rightwing social media chat groups and had encouraged others to emulate the Australian white nationalist Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people and tried to kill 40 others in terror attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.Jennings had also discussed molotov cocktails and “killing migrants when they arrive on their boats”, the prosecutor Lee Ingham told the Old Bailey in January.Jennings, who remains on conditional bail, denied possession of a document for terrorist purposes, namely Tarrant’s racist manifesto, on 14 November 2024. The judge, Andrew Lockhart KC, said this count would lie on the file at his sentencing on 4 September at Leicester crown court.Last month the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) raised the UK national threat level from “substantial” to “severe”. The Home Office said: “The terrorist threat level in the UK has been rising for some time, driven by an increase in the broader Islamist and extreme rightwing terrorist threat from individuals and small groups based in the UK.”Referrals of far-right extremists to Prevent, the government’s anti-terrorism programme, surged between April 2024 and March 2025, according to the most recent government data.In the year to March 2025, 8,778 referrals were made because of suspicions of extremist radicalisation, 27% more than in the previous year and the highest number of referrals in a single year since records began 10 years ago.Of the 8,769 referrals where the type of concern was specified, 21% (1,798 cases) were due to “extreme rightwing concerns”; 10% (870 cases) were referrals connected to Islamist ideology; and 56%(4,917 cases) were for individuals judged to have no identified ideology. Concerns regarding “fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks” accounted for 5% of referrals (469 cases).