Alfie Coleman wiped tears from his eyes with a tissue as the judge described his views as 'virulently racist' and told him he must be treated as a 'dangerous offender'. The 22-year-old from Great Notley, Essex, had just been sentenced to 13 and a half years in prison, with a further five years on extended licence, for plotting a mass gun attack and preparing for terrorist acts — a plan that began with a 'kill list' of customers and colleagues at the Tesco store where he worked.
Coleman made the list of 'race traitors' and wrote a 'manifesto' naming potential targets including the Lord Mayor of London and a mosque. He was caught only after a highly sophisticated MI5 sting. Undercover officers engaged him in encrypted chat as he sought to buy weapons — a Skorpion submachine gun and an AK47 — and the operation culminated in a Morrisons car park in Stratford, east London, on the morning of 29 September 2023.
“Neo-Nazi Alfie Coleman, 22, jailed for 13.5 years for plotting mass gun attack and making a kill list of Tesco colleagues.”
That day, then aged 19, Coleman had arranged with an undercover officer to buy a Makarov pistol, five magazines and 200 rounds of ammunition. Dramatic video showed him dropping £3,500 in a Land Rover Discovery and picking up a holdall containing the handgun and ammunition from the boot. Before he had gone 30 yards, armed counter-terrorism police confronted him and forced him to the ground. He was still carrying his Tesco employee card.
A search of the home he shared with his parents and sibling revealed the extent of his murderous ideology: a device to detect bugs and secret cameras in his bedside drawer, a rock painted with a swastika on a table, a Black Sun flag associated with neo-Nazism on the wall, various extreme right-wing books, and £2,500 in savings. Police also found that Coleman idolised Thomas Mair, the extremist who killed MP Jo Cox.
Authorities first became concerned in the summer of 2023, when Coleman became increasingly active on online extreme right-wing groups. In early September he arranged to buy a Skorpion automatic weapon, an AK47 rifle and bullets in France, having identified a local mosque as his target — but he quickly abandoned that plan. Instead, MI5’s sting led to his capture.
At his Old Bailey retrial, Coleman was found guilty of preparing for terrorist acts. Passing sentence, Judge Richard Marks KC told him: 'You maintained that much of what you had said and the virulently racist views which you expressed were no more than intrusive thoughts and did not represent what you believed in real life. It was in effect, although you did not use these words, hyperbole, bravado, fantasy, and you never had any intention to carry out an attack.' Coleman appeared tearful as the judge spoke.
Now he must serve 13 and a half years behind bars, with the judge's assessment that he remains a danger to the public.