A former prison guard who was branded a ‘racist, homophobic neo-Nazi’ has been found guilty of possessing a terrorist handbook.
Ashley Podsiad-Sharp, 42, was convicted on Thursday after a jury heard how he kept a copy of the White Resistance Manual on his computer.
The document ‘set out the way in which terrorists could kill people, maim people and endeavour to avoid detection’.
Podsiad-Sharp was also accused of disseminating a terrorist publication in relation to him posting a link on a Telegram channel for members of the White Stag Athletics Club, which he founded, calling himself ‘Sarge’.
The link was to the music of Mr Bond, a rapper who has been jailed in Austria for releasing versions of popular songs overlaid with extreme right-wing, racist lyrics.
Prosecutors pointed out that one of these songs, a version of the tune Power Level, was played by murderer Stephan Balliet as he live-streamed the Halle Synagogue shootings in Germany in 2019.
Nevertheless, Podsiad-Sharp, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, was cleared of this charge at Sheffield Crown Court on Friday.
He argued that the songs were comedic parodies that were designed to shock and not to encourage terrorism.
Judge Jeremy Richardson KC refused to set bail for Podsiad-Sharp, calling him a flight risk.
Speaking directly to the defendant, he said: ‘You are married to a Polish national. You are an intelligent man and you are a resourceful man.
‘There are real risks, so it seems to me, that you could leave the jurisdiction of this country.’
The judge went on: ‘You have been convicted by the jury of a very serious criminal offence. Indeed, it is an offence related to terrorism.
‘There is but one sentence in a case of this kind and that is a sentence of imprisonment. The issue for me to decide is now long that sentence should be.’
Mr Richardson stressed how detailed the White Resistance Manual was, saying that the printed version he was given was two inches thick.
He wants the Probation Service to assess whether Podsiad-Sharp is considered ‘dangerous offender’ before he is sentenced on July 21. He will remain in custody until then.
When the jury acquitted Podsiad-Sharp of the final count, he thanked them and shouted ‘tell my wife I love her’, as he left the dock.
During the trial, prosecutor Denise Breen-Lawton told the court how the White Resistance Manual was ‘clearly a terrorist manual’ which with a white supremacist mantra, calling for armed resistance to the ‘threat to the white race’ from Jews and other people who are not white.
Podsiad-Sharp, who used to work at Leeds Prison but is now a lorry driver, tried to claim he did not know the document was on his computer and had not read it or understood what it was.
But Ms Breen-Lawton said this was ‘utter nonsense’ as it was securely stored in an encrypted ‘virtual safe’ which was protected by passwords the defendant eventually provided to the police on the orders of a judge.
She said it was also copied to another hard drive and uploaded to file-sharing site Dropbox.
When she opened the case earlier this month, Ms Breen-Lawton said: ‘Podsiad-Sharp glorifies and idolises Adolf Hitler and everything that the Nazi movement stood for and is still standing for.’
People who were looking to join Podsiad-Sharp’s White Stag Athletics Club were vetted with a questionnaire which asked ‘what do you believe happened in the Holocaust’ and ‘what do you envisage victory to look like?’
Podsiad-Sharp told the jury he was ‘a Christian and a National Socialist’, described himself as a ‘racial realist’ and said ‘multiculturalism is not good’.
Asked about the Holocaust, the defendant said he was a ‘revisionist and did not accept the orthodox position’ and said that ‘there was very little evidence to support the Holocaust’.
