Man found guilty of plotting machete attack on UK Pride event

A man has been found guilty of plotting a terrorist machete attack on a Pride event in the UK last year.

White supremacist Ethan Stables had gathered a machete, an axe, knives, a BB gun and an air rifle for the planned attack, as well as provisions to make an explosive device, Pink News has reported.

He was foiled after telling others in a Nazi Facebook group that he planned to kill people at the Pride event at the New Expire pub in Cumbria.

His Facebook posts about “going to war” and killing gay people led a woman to contact the police.

Stables was arrested near the venue on the night of the event.

He claimed during the trial that his social media threats to attack people at the event were to impress his friends.

The prosecution described his claims that the threats were to impress people as “nonsense”.

Stables also claimed in court that when he bragged on Facebook that he would kill people with a machete, he had forgotten that he owned one.

“Between 2016 and his arrest in 2017, he was planning and preparing to commit acts of terrorism directed towards members of these groups but, primarily, directed towards people who were lesbian or gay,” said prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford.

“His purpose in these acts of preparation was to launch a murderous attack on members of these communities—in particular, the prosecution suggests, people who were gay.”

Stables remains in custody and is to be sentenced this week.