Image copyright West Midlands Police Image caption Mikko Vehvilainen was sentenced on Friday

A serving soldier and self-confessed racist has been jailed for having a banned CS gas canister. Corporal Mikko Vehvilainen, who stockpiled a host of legally held weaponry, pleaded guilty to possession of the spray, which he kept in the drawer of a home he was renovating. He added: “It is to be hoped the time in custody will enable you to look and consider of what you seek to achieve, in hope you put it behind you.”

Vehvilainen, of the Royal Anglian Regiment, was cleared following a trial on Thursday of having a copy of a terrorist document – namely white nationalist mass murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto, the European Declaration of Independence. “Whether it crosses over into the reaches of criminal law or not.”

Vehvilainen, who is married with children, is also accused of two counts of stirring up racial hatred through posts on the US-based Christogenea.org website, where he used the name NicoChristian. The jury heard how Vehvilainen had a host lawfully held weapons including “guns, knives and crossbows” which he kept at his Army accommodation in Sennybridge Camp, Powys. “He was involved with National Action and he held views which he well understands you might find really distasteful, but those are views he was, and is, entitled to hold.”

The court heard that the male had made attempts to join the Army. He was also convicted of having a terrorism document called the White Resistance Manual, which had entries on "arson, sabotage and selective assassinations", and of distributing a terrorist publication called Ethnic Cleansing Operations. A third man, also of the Royal Anglians, Private Mark Barrett, 23, of Kendrew Barracks, Cottesmore, Rutland, Leicestershire, was acquitted of membership of the banned extreme far right terrorist group, National Action.
An unidentified civilian is jailed for three and a half years for terror offences connected to banned neo-Nazi group National Action. Acquitted Finnish national Mikko Vehvilainen, a serving soldier in the British Army, is jailed alongside him for a weapons offence, receiving 12 months.