Dundee teenager jailed after inciting riot on Facebook

• Liam Allan launched event called “City Centre Riot” at height of disturbances in English cities in August last year

• Tayside Police set up major incident room to contain page

Liam Allan told followers to “show the English t**** that we are better rioters than them tea sippers”.

He became the first person in Scotland to be arrested for trying to incite riots using Facebook after he posted the page on 9 August last year.

Allan started the event on the social networking site – titled “City Centre Riot” – at the height of the violence and looting that swept cities across England in August last year. Rioting gripped parts of London and the city centres of Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Gloucester.

Days after it started, Allan took to Facebook and started the page encouraging a riot in Dundee, inviting hundreds of friends to take part.

He wrote: “Get suited and booted, crowbars, baseball bats, the lot… show the English t**** that we are better rioters than them tea sippers.”

Fiscal depute Donna Davidson told Dundee Sheriff Court that police had set up a “major incident room” after being alerted to the page.

She said: “He was taken to police HQ and interviewed, and said it was not meant to be taken literally. He said it was just a joke that he and his sister had talked about. He said he had gone up to his room and posted it and said that you could tell by the way it was written that it was a joke.”

Allan, 19, of Benvie Gardens, Dundee, pleaded guilty on indictment to a charge of breaching the peace on 9 August.

Defence solicitor Doug McConnell said Allan had no previous convictions and argued that his case was different from that of two other Dundee teenagers, Jordan McGinley and Shawn Divin, who were jailed last year over similar Facebook pages.

Both received three-year prison terms after admitting starting a page called “riot in the toon” about a week after Allan’s page was found. Last month, they had those jail terms cut to 27 months for McGinley and 29 months for Divin after appealing.

Mr McConnell said: “The start time of the event was set at 5:30pm – when he was sitting down to have dinner with his parents.

“He should have known better but there was nothing to tell him, ‘Don’t do this, this is wrong’. His thought was that this wasn’t a crime and he didn’t realise what he was doing was a crime. He accepts now it was stupid and criminal.”

Sheriff George Way told Allan he had pled guilty to a “grave offence” and that a jail term was the only option.

He said: “I can’t accept that this was a prank or intended as a joke. The problem with the crime of inciting and the problem with social networking is once you have lit the signal beacon, you can’t stop it – you don’t know what others are going to do.

“I can’t see any way of adequately punishing you and comparatively reflecting the sentences handed down to others in Dundee other than prison.”