British Neo-Nazi couple found guilty of terror group membership

A white supremacist British couple, who named their son after the leader of Nazi Germany, has been found guilty of being members of a banned UK far-right terrorist group.

Adam Thomas, 22, and Claudia Patatas, 38, were found guilty on Monday of being members of the racist group National Action by Birmingham's Crown Court.

During the trial, the court was told that the couple had given their child the middle name “Adolf” in honor of the Nazi leader.

A third defendant, Daniel Bogunovic, 27, was also convicted of being a member of the neo-Nazi group. The warehouse worker was a leading figure in the organization’s Midlands chapter, an area in middle England.

Thomas, a twice-failed army applicant, was also convicted of having a terrorist manual, the Anarchist’s Cookbook, which contained instructions on making “viable” bombs and explosives.

Prosecutors said the case was about "a specific type of terror, born out of fanatical and tribal belief in white supremacy."

Asked by his barrister, Frida Hussain, whether he was a racist, Thomas replied: “Yes.” But she added: “It is something I do not tend to think about any more, something I want to put behind me.”

Thomas said, during his school years, he had come to the attention of the Prevent counter-radicalization program, which took him to see a female Holocaust survivor. Thomas said: “She told me she was evacuated from Germany to Britain and I couldn’t see that as being a Holocaust survivor, at the time.”

He said the photograph of him holding his child while wearing KKK robes was “just play”. He said: “They were not put up on some website or used to promote some agenda or ideology.”

Thomas talked of chat groups where he had made anti-Semitic and racist remarks to other alleged National Action members: “That was entertaining to me at the time. It was funny at the time.”

Asked whether his parents had been “extremists or racists”, he said: “They were common racists.”

The Birmingham jury reached unanimous verdicts after it was also shown the evidence which also included photographs of Thomas dressed in Ku Klux Klan (KKK) robes while cradling his baby.  The KKK is an alt-right white supremacist group from the US.

Thomas, who was twice turned down by the army because of an Asperger’s diagnosis, said his beliefs in white nationalism began at an early age and his racist views led to his expulsion from mainstream school aged 14.

Thomas said his paternal grandfather, from Derry in Northern Ireland, had “a positive view of Hitler and the Nazis” and used to deliver a “Hitler salute” when Thomas visited as a boy. He said his great-grandfather was a supporter of the British Union of Fascists.

The Neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action, founded in 2013, was outlawed under anti-terror legislation three years later after it celebrated the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.

The anti-Semitic and white supremacist group had celebrated the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016 by Thomas Mair.

The group describes itself as a "National Socialist youth organization". However, then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd described it as “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic.”

“It has absolutely no place in a Britain that works for everyone,” she added.

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