White supremacist planned race war

This is London/October 4, 2002

A racist found guilty of amassing arms and bomb-making equipment was planning a race war, police say. David Tovey, 37, from Oxfordshire, was caught when police probing a racist graffiti campaign raided his house in Carterton. An Oxford Crown Court jury found Tovey guilty on two charges of racially aggravated criminal damage.

The jury was not aware Tovey had admitted three explosives charges and six weapons charges at an earlier hearing. Remanding Tovey, Judge Mary Jane Mowat adjourned the case for three weeks for psychiatric reports.

Neighbours were evacuated from their homes after officers found pipe bombs, a Second World War Sten gun, two shotguns, a silenced pistol and dum-dum bullets at Tovey's house.

Detectives said the bodybuilding fanatic was waiting for "some kind of trigger" to start a massacre. They said his hoard of munitions was more devastating than a terrorist's.

Tovey admitted possessing a prohibited Sten gun, a pistol, a SPAZ pump action shotgun, a shortened Kestrel shotgun, a night-stick adapted to fire one shotgun round and 12 rounds of 9mm ammunition.

He also admitted two counts of having explosives and making a napalm-type explosive.

The court had heard that Tovey scrawled anti-white graffiti in public toilets in Witney, Oxfordshire, between August and November last year in a bid to stir up hatred against ethnic minorities.

In January this year he was caught on CCTV going into the toilet of a Shell petrol station in Stratford-upon-Avon where more racist slogans were daubed.

Police searched Tovey's home and found the weapons stash as well as BNP literature and registration numbers belonging to black and Asian drivers.