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Three men were found to be guilty of carrying out an arson attack on a warehouse in East London, which was orchestrated by the public prosecutor’s office of people who were connected to the paramilitary Wagner Group in Russia.
The judgments were given by a jury in Londons Old Bailey on Tuesday. The jurors found Nii Kojo Mensah, 23, Jakeem Rose (23) and Ugnius Asena (20), guilty of exacerbated arson. Paul English, 61, was freed from the same charges.
The attack in March 2024 aimed at Oddisey’s warehouses, a company that sent Humanitarian Aid and Elon Musk Starlink satellite technology to Ukraine after Russia was fully invaded in the country’s full invasion.
The 23 -year -old Dmitrijus Paulauskas was released by two cases in which information about terrorist acts was not disclosed.
The 20 -year -old Ashton Evans from Newport, Gwent, was dismissed by a number of failure, information about terrorist actions, but was convicted of a second count. This was in relation to a separate not realized action, which aimed at the wine shop and the hiding place in Mayfair and belongs to a prominent Russian dissident Evgeny Chichvarkin.
Since the beginning of the case, the prosecutors have claimed that the attacks have been arranged by people who were connected to the paramilitary Wagner group who reached the accused by a shady network of chat forums in the Russian social network telegram. Moscow’s deputy military force is prohibited in Great Britain as a terrorist organization.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the conspiracy of Dylan Earl, 21, was coordinated by a British man who guilty of the new National Security Act of Great Britain in the past year for a criminal offense to act enemy activities through foreign states.
In Telegram messages that the jury showed, Earl is spoken to a user under the Bot of action – in an online account that has been suspected for a long time to recruit people for sabotage and fire in the UK and the EU.
“I know I can be the best spy you have ever seen, but we need more communication and faster work with contracts. I will do everything you want in my country,” he said in a message from April 9, 2024.
Between 2023 and 2024, the advertisements for Privet-Bot appeared at least eight times in the Gray Zone, the largest pro-Russian telegram channel, which is connected to the mercenary group, according to an investigation by the project for organized crime and corruption, a global network of investigative journalists.
David Cawthorne, the head of the unit of the department for the fight against terrorism of the Crown Pralitial Service, said it was clear that this was a targeted attack
The arson was “on behalf of the Wagner Group, a private military entrepreneur who is closely linked to the Russian state,” he added.
Another man who was involved in the operation guilty Jake Reeves announced last year that he had accepted payment from a foreign intelligence service.
A separate news thread between Reeves and Paulauskas, which was seen by the court, said that one of the accused did not receive the payment that was promised to carry out the arson attack because he “did not do the Wagner standards”.
“Saint fuck, so that Wagner literally do British gangs … they literally change world history,” said Paulauskas.
