A UK vaccine opponent who wrote social media posts calling for violence against scientists, politicians and public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic was today sentenced to five years in prison after being charged with inciting terrorism.
A British judge said 55-year-old Patrick Ruan had a "compulsive and obsessive" opposition to vaccines and wrote lies on the Telegram network.
In one message, he called for the lynching of England's chief medical officer, Chris Viti.
In a series of messages in 2021, Ruan announced that he advocated that "all of them should be caught and killed" referring to the people who made and delivered the vaccines against the COVID-19 virus.
Ruan also encouraged other people to "find where (vaccination promoters) live, put together a hit squad and shoot them in their beds."
He also called for an "IRA directive", a reference to the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) campaign of attacks, and advocated bombing vaccine labs and 5G antennas.
"This was not an idle online chat, he was encouraging people to seriously injure or kill others by suggesting who to target," said Gareth Rees, acting commander from the Metropolitan Police's Counter-Terrorism Command, which began investigating Ruan's posts. in 2021
Prosecutor Julia Fore Walker said the posts reached a "very wide audience" through two Telegram groups, one with 18.000 users and the other with 8.000 users.
Ruan was initially arrested in November 2021 and indicted almost two years later.
He was convicted at the Central Criminal Court in London in September of two counts of inciting terrorism.
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