A group of six individuals from Britain acting for Russia’s Wagner group have been sentenced to prison for setting fire to a London-based storage unit that was holding relief supplies intended for Ukraine.
Sentencing and Roles
Sentencing the men, the presiding judge at the central criminal court stated that they had orchestrated a “series of terrorist and sabotage acts” to benefit the Russian state.
Dylan Earl received a seventeen-year jail term with an extra six-year period on supervised release due to his “leading role”. Another defendant, Jake Reeves, from Croydon in south London, was given 12 years in prison with an additional year on extended licence. The offences they admitted made them the initial persons to be convicted under the National Security Act 2023.
Jakeem Rose, also a Croydon resident, was sentenced to eight years and 10 months. Nii Mensah, a Thornton Heath, South London local, was given nine years imprisonment and Ugnius Asmena, 21, who was without a fixed address, was given seven years in prison. These three individuals were each found guilty of aggravated arson and received a further year on extended licence by the judge.
Ashton Evans, a 20-year-old drug dealer hailing from Newport, Gwent, was sentenced to nine years plus a further year on supervised release after being found guilty of failing to disclose details regarding acts of terrorism connected to a separate scheme in Mayfair.
Incident Specifics
The deliberate fire on a warehouse in Leyton, east London put 60 firefighters at risk and resulted in £1m in damage in March last year.
The court heard that Earl, 21 and Reeves, 24 remained in their residences while coordinating the incident for the Wagner group, acting on behalf of the Russian Federation.
The group targeted the warehouse because it was being used to supply emergency relief and StarLink satellite equipment to Ukraine.
When the same Ukrainian company was hit by an arson attack 10 days later in Madrid, investigators from the Metropolitan Police's anti-terror unit assumed control of the probe.
Proof and Additional Schemes
When Earl was arrested, police analysis of his cellphone uncovered he had recordings of the storage facility blaze being initiated and was in communication with the Wagner group on the Telegram messaging app, via an user profile with the usernames ‘Privet Bot’ and ‘Lucky Strike’.
Some of the messages showed that preliminary surveillance for additional operations, involving arson attacks at a dining establishment and wine shop in Mayfair district belonging to the Russian dissident Evgeny Chichvarkin had already taken place. The employment of explosive devices to damage buildings was also deliberated.
Detectives found that the defendant Earl was also raising the potential abduction of the dissident Chichvarkin and “exiling him back to Russia to confront imprisonment”.
The drug dealer from Elmesthorpe in Leicestershire had talked about an additional planned incident in the Czech Republic.
In a residence inspection, law enforcement located a Russian flag, more than £20,000 in cash and cocaine with a market value of about £34,000.
Motivations and Judicial Remarks
The court heard he was a participant in numerous channels promoting Russian propaganda and was driven by “simple and ugly greed”.
“This legal matter concerns the efforts of the Russian Federation to acquire harmful worldwide sway using social media to enlist saboteurs vast distances from Moscow.”
She determined the arson attack had a “terrorist connection” regardless of whether the perpetrators were aware of it. The Wagner group is banned by the UK government as a terrorist group.
