| Hateland -
Articles |
01/07/00
- Lair of hatred
By JEFF EDWARDS, Chief Crime Correspondent, OONAGH BLACKMAN
and ADRIAN SHAW
The Mirror
OFFICERS from the Sweeney drove through the night to trap
the bomber in his lair. But it was a journey into the
unknown after a phone tip-off. And as the convoy of unmarked
Flying Squad ears swept towards Hampshire, the eight unarmed
detectives had no idea of the peril that lay ahead.
When the end came for David Copeland, there was no room
for denial. His dingy first-floor bedsit was a shrine
to hate, crammed with weapons of death and destruction.
The detective sergeant officer leading the raid knocked
on the door. A voice called "Hang On." Copeland
had been in bed.
He opened the door, wearing only underpants and socks.
Spotting a red and black Nazi swastika flag and newspaper
clippings of terrorist atrocities, police seized the suspect
and pinned him to the wall. An officer demanded: "Are
you the bomber?" As the handcuffs locked his arms
behind his back, Copeland blurted: "Yeah, they are
down to me. I did them on my own."
By the bed lay a loaded £300 Silver Antler crossbow,
its eight-inch tungsten-tipped bolt capable of penetrating
three inches of oak. There was a powerful six shot .22
gas pistol. Six commando daggers and combat knives and
boxes of powerful fireworks were packed under the bed
and into spare corners.
One a table, were strewn the components of bomb number
four destined for the London suburb of Southall and its
largely Asian population. Copeland was caught after a
CCTV photograph of the Brixton bomber appeared in the
press. Among the calls to police was one from Copeland's
workmate Paul Mifsud.
From the phone number passed to Scotland Yard by Mifsud,
police found an address on the outskirts at Cove, Hants.
The Flying Squad officers entered the house around 1am
on May 1 last year and quietly climbed the stairs in single
file.
When Copeland opened his door, they were confronted by
a wall montage of newspaper clippings showing the bloodied
victims of the bombings in Omagh, Nairobi, Paris and the
Atlanta Olympics. Fearing the room was booby trapped,
the detectives hustled Copeland to a car which whisked
him to the murder hunt headquarters in London.
As explosives specialists started to pick their way through
the bomb-making equipment, there was a moment of drama
when a high-pitched whine started up from under a pile
of magazines and rubbish. It turned out to be Copeland's
pet rat Whizzer happily spinning his exercise wheel. Meanwhile,
officers had called in the bomb squad and started evacuating
the neighbourhood.
One detective said later: "We had no idea of the
degree of danger we were walking into. "We had no
warrant to search and could not just burst in. We were
only entitled to knock and ask him polite questions. "We
didn't know until we opened the door if he was a strong
suspect or not. We did not have the element of surprise
and were not armed.
"If he had decided to go down fighting he could have
picked up that crossbow and fired it through his door.
He would have skewered three of us." Bomb disposal
experts found dozens of components linked to Copeland's
terror campaign.
Scattered around were boxes of home-made explosives, crudely-made
clock mechanism timing devices, batteries, and dozens
of boxes of nails stolen from builders' stores on the
London Jubilee line Tube extension or bought from B&Q
stores. Several detectives later experienced delayed shock
after the full impact of the danger hit them.
They have since received counselling. One said: "As
Flying Squad officers we go up against gunmen and dangerous
villains every day. No one had prepared us for the danger
we were suddenly facing. "When we were ordered to
go that night there was no warning that we were going
up against a man who might try to defend himself with
deadly force, who might have blown us all up the moment
we walked in.
"The information was only 'it might be the right
man'. We didn't have guns or any real means to defend
ourselves. It was sheer luck that he gave himself up without
a fight." The full horror of the bomber's deadly
lair is revealed in leaked documents obtained by The Mirror.
Copeland kept a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf on the shelf
alongside vicious neo-Nazi magazines like Third Reich
and Aryan Nations.
He had print-outs from the internet of pages 10 to 55
of The Terrorist's Handbook. The killer had made his own
notes on timer delays, pipe bombs and electrical ignition.
Another print-out gave a recipe for flash powder entitled
How To Make A 'Real' Pipe Bomb. Copeland had broken open
at least 140 rockets with names like Millennium Air Thunder,
Bazooka and God of Thunder.
He extracted a total of several kilos of powder. The police
document reads: "Such quantities of flash powder
could if suitably confined and initiated produce violent
explosions capable of causing serious injuries to individuals."
Every packet of nails from DIY stores was accounted for
with till receipts. The bills for sports bags used to
plant the bombs were in neat piles.
Police contacted the shops and found video footage of
Copeland entering and leaving. He even kept the train
tickets he used to travel to and from London during the
bombing campaign. Copeland's video collection included
films on serial killers and another called Asian Erotica.
He visited Soho sex shops and built up a hoard of hard-core
porn films featuring graphic scenes of bondage and torture.
And he kept newspaper cuttings about the London nail-bombing
campaign. Scattered around Copeland's bedsit were boots
with steel toecaps, and black combat trousers.
There were packs of batteries, superglue, and packets
of latex gloves to cover fingerprints. Tucked away in
one corner were letters and race-hate pamphlets from neo-Nazi
cronies in the National Socialist Movement dating back
to 1998. A membership letter dated January 27 1999 said:
"Welcome to membership of the NSM until 2000 AD.
"It is always a special day for us when a new comrade
has the strength of purpose and courage to step forward
and join. "For every 10 official supporters, one
comrade goes the extra mile which is membership.
"Let us all live in the hope that our racial brothers
and sisters will find that which is within them as you
have done so that our movement can gather in strength
and momentum until the glorious day when the sun once
more dawns on our own homeland and ultimately a new and
racially unified Aryan civilisation."
The letter was signed: "Heil Hitler...Tony Adams."
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