Violent extremism should be stamped on early

NZPA report:

An Auckland man has avoided a jail term after hatching a plan to detonate a van full of explosives and nails outside an ACC branch office.

Alan Thomas was so angry with ACC that he planned to set off a fire alarm at the Takapuna Branch and as staff gathered outside he would set off the bomb, The New Zealand Herald reported today.

The 55-year-old was sentenced in North Shore District Court yesterday to 10 months’ home detention and ordered to pay $5000 after earlier being found guilty of threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm to ACC staff.

When police raided Thomas’s North Shore home they found bomb-making manuals on his home computer. …

Thomas had a “deep-seated hostility to ACC”.

“It is clear Mr Thomas has a compulsive obsession with ACC which he seems evidently quite proud of.”

I think the sentence was too light. When we look at what happened in Norway, we see the tragedy which can occur such propensity to violence is not taken seriously.