A man who posted messages calling for violence in Cameroon on his social media accounts has today been jailed for two years after counter terrorism detectives spotted one of his posts.
Kingston Crown Court heard that on 3 May 2018, Met Police Counter Terrorism Command officers trawling the internet found a concerning tweet about “a big explosion” at an embassy and launched an investigation.
They identified that Swedish national Ganye Kwah-Driscole, 47 (12.12.71) of west London had sent the tweet and an identical message on Facebook that day.
They subsequently trawled through thousands of Facebook and Twitter posts, identifying a further four messages that constituted terrorism offences – all relating to attacking embassies in Cameroon, or calling for violence against the Cameroon government.
On 26 June, counter terrorism detectives arrested Kwah-Driscole at his home address, on suspicion of encouraging terrorism, contrary to section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006.
Acting Commander Alexis Boon of the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command said, “Kwah-Driscole’s messages were incendiary and had the potential to motivate people thousands of miles away to violence. It was important that we stopped Kwah-Driscole from publishing any more messages like this.”
On 24 May 2019, Kwah-Driscole pleaded guilty to five counts of encouraging terrorism.
He was sentenced on 13 June to two years’ imprisonment for each offence, to run concurrently.
Anyone who sees messages of this nature online is urged to report it to police in confidence at gov.uk/act or by calling 0800 789 321.
