Couple part of banned group

A FORMER Miss Hitler beauty pageant contestant and her Nazi-admiring ex-boyfriend have been convicted of membership of banned extreme right group National Action.

Alice Cutter, 23, claimed during a lengthy retrial she had been pestered by others into entering the competition under the name Miss Buchenwald – a reference to the Second World War death camp.

She flatly denied being a part of the group, which was labelled “a racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic organisation” by then Home Secretary Amber Rudd when it was banned in December 2016.

But jurors rejected her denials after hearing evidence, including how Cutter exchanged hundreds of messages, many racist and anti-Semitic, and was still meeting other members months after the ban.

Prosecutors said Cutter, who joked about gassing synagogues and using a Jew’s head as a football, had been a “central spoke” among the organisation’s hardcore, and entered the pageant to drive recruitment.

She claimed never to have considered herself a member, even before the ban, despite attending meetings with group leaders and posing for a Nazistyle salute on the steps of Leeds Town Hall in 2016.

Cutter, of Sowerby Bridge, also attended a demonstration in York in May 2016. Her expartner Mark Jones, 25, of Sowerby Bridge, a former member of the British National Party’s youth wing, was also convicted of being a member, after being described by prosecutors as a “leader and strategist”.

Also convicted of the same offence were two other men: Garry Jack, 24, from Heathland Avenue, Shard End, Birmingham, and 19-year-old Connor Scothern, of Bagnall Avenue, Nottingham.

Judge Paul Farrer QC, said: “You have all been convicted of a serious terrorist offence. You cannot be sentenced today. A date will be fixed in due course.”

“You have all been convicted of a serious terrorist offence.”