Four alleged neo-Nazis had ‘particular interest in the eradication of Jews’

Prosecutors have told a jury at Birmingham Crown Court that four defendants accused of being members of a banned neo-Nazi group had “a particular interest in the eradication of Jews”.

The three men and a woman, including a couple in their 20s from West Yorkshire, are accused of being hard-core members of National Action which prosecuting barrister Barnaby Jameson QC described as “a fellowship of hate”.

At their trial on Tuesday, Jameson said: “We are entering the neo-Nazi world of ‘white jihad.’ We are talking about a tiny, secretive group of die-hard neo-Nazis with no compunction about attaining their objectives with the use or threat of terror”.

He described them as “a group with a common admiration for Hitler and the architects of the Holocaust” that “shared the same pathological racial prejudice and conviction in brutal white supremacy, with a shared enthusiasm for ethnic cleansing” and “a particular interest in the eradication of the Jews”.

The defendants are Mark Jones, 25, and Alice Cutter, 23, both from Halifax, West Yorkshire, as well as Garry Jack, 24, from Birmingham, and Connor Scothern, 18, from Nottingham.

Jameson said they advocated “Nazi aims and ideals, the violent ethnic cleansing of anyone who did not fit the Nazi mould of racial purity – Jews, primarily, but also blacks, Asians, gays and liberals”.

The trial is expected to last ten weeks.