Newcastle Bomb Plot Verdict
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A 19-year-old former student on trial for plotting to detonate a bomb at Newcastle College has told jurors that buying a pistol online was “just like buying a bar of chocolate”.
Newcastle Crown Court also heard that Lyburd, who was expelled from the college two years previously for disruptive behaviour, had made various Facebook posts alluding to the planned attack. Lyburd claimed that the posts were made only to attract the attention of friends and that he had no intention of causing any harm.
The ex-student’s collection of weaponry at the house where he lived with his mother included five pipe bombs and a pistol with 94 hollow-point rounds, the court heard. The pistol was purchased on a Darkweb site called Evolution under the name Donald Trump.
With the internet in a state of constant expansion, this sudden bringing to the surface of its darker side has raised the issue of just how easy it is to get hold of prohibited items online. It seems that every proscribed commodity can be found in the secretive communities in the back-streets of the web, from weaponry to drugs and counterfeit Bitcoin, the currency with which Lyburd purchased the pistol. And while many illegal deals take place in this secretive marketplace, it is as difficult to regulate as any other part of the internet and far more prone to unreliability; though obviously reliable enough to deliver to Lyburd the weapon and ammunition for his apparently planned attack.
In his Facebook posts, the accused also paid homage to Jayden Freyberg, the Washington high-school student who killed four students and himself in October.