Student Gets 40 Years for Terror Campaign Against Muslims
Pavlo Lapshyn came to Britain in April from Ukraine after winning a prize to further his studies, but within days he had stabbed Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham. Photograph: Reuters
A white supremacist who hoped to “ethnically cleanse” Muslims has been told he will serve at least 40 years imprisonment for a terror campaign in which he hunted down a Muslim to murder before he bombed three Midlands mosques aiming to kill and maim worshippers.
Pavlo Lapshyn, 25, came to Britain in April from Ukraine after winning a prize to further his studies. Instead he tried to trigger a race war, fuelled by extremist material on his computer - including a video game called “ethnic cleansing” which celebrated racist violence.
Within a day of arriving and starting a work placement in Birmingham, Lapshyn who was a PhD student, was viewing an extremist rightwing Russian website used by those imprisoned for racist crimes, including murder.
A day later he photographed himself with a Buffalo River hunting knife in his bedroom and three days later took it onto the streets, “intent on finding a Muslim to murder”, Mr Justice Sweeney said as he sentenced Lapshyn.
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