British boy makes bombs with chemicals bought online

LONDON - A British teenager with an “unhealthy interest” in explosives made gunpowder and nail-bombs with chemicals bought online through his mother’s eBay account, police said.

Police found a pipe packed with nails and screws and charged with powder in the 16-year-old’s boy’s bedroom, and a pipe with fireworks hidden under a waste oil tank at a nearby petrol station in Tamworth, Staffordshire, around 190 km from London.

The boy also had also stored literature from right wing groups - the British National Party and the English Defence League - together with Nazi emblems, the Telegraph reported.

An eBay seller contacted police after he was concerned about the commodities being bought. The family’s house in Tamworth was immediately evacuated while explosives and firearms experts searched the property for three days.

The Stafford Crown Court was told that Internet conversations dedicated to explosives and firearms had been found on a computer in the house.

The mother of one of the boy’s friends also handed in a video clip showing an explosive device being detonated, prosecutor Malcolm Morse said.

The judge made the boy subject to a three-year controlling order for public safety. He told him he was a danger to the public and said he found it hard to believe that his parents had let him carry on making explosive substances.

Meanwhile, Darron Whitehead, the defending counsel, said: “There is nothing in this case to suggest there was any intention to cause harm to human life.”

The boy’s parents and his neighbours all knew about his interests and were not concerned about him, he said.