Massacre plot 'teenage fantasy'

Britain's Crown Prosecution Service was forced to defend itself yesterday against claims it had wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds by bringing two teenagers to court accused of conspiring to blow up a shopping centre then committing a Columbine-style massacre at their school.

A jury took just 45 minutes to accept the argument of Matthew Swift, 18, and Ross McKnight, 16, that the alleged plot, which prompted a major police investigation and two-week trial, amounted to little more than adolescent fantasy scrawled in a school textbook.

The two Manchester boys, who had never been in trouble with the police before, faced possible life sentences if found guilty of conspiring to murder teachers and students and cause explosions.

They have been in custody since their arrests in March, an experience they described as "purgatory", and said they now wanted to get on with their lives.

The CPS insisted it was right to bring the case to court after police seized evidence kept in journals and diaries following a late-night drunken phone "confession" by McKnight to a girl he admired. She told her mother who called the police.

But although plans of their school were found, and instructions on how to use acetone peroxide as a detonator, no explosives or firearms were recovered.

The boys stifled tears as they spoke of their relief outside Manchester Crown Court yesterday.

McKnight, whose father, Ray, is a police officer, said: "I would like to make it clear that at no time was any person put at risk ... This was just a fantasy."

Roderick Carus, QC, who defended McKnight, said prosecutors should make allowances for the "frivolity of youth".

"I think this was an unnecessary, heavy-handed prosecution against two young lads who could have been dealt with in a more sensitive way. As the jury's verdict demonstrates, this was a waste of public money, hundreds of thousands of pounds."

THE COLUMBINE CONNECTION

During the trial it was claimed that the teenagers were obsessed with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who murdered 12 students and a teacher and then killed themselves during a shooting spree at their high school in Colorado in April 1999.

The prosecution claimed that the two boys intended to mount their scheme on the 10th anniversary of the Columbine massacre.

So convinced were investigators that the pair were scheming to re-enact Columbine that two detectives were flown to Colorado to question the homicide department which investigated the killings.

- INDEPENDENT