Terror group has now been ‘dismantled’, claim police

COUNTER-TERRORISM chiefs believe they have now dismantled an extreme right-wing terrorist group linked to an MP murder plot, and whose ranks included a British soldier and a police officer.

Alex Davies became the 19th person to be convicted of membership of banned group National Action after the 27-year-old was found guilty at Winchester Crown Court.

The group’s co-founder, from Swansea, was key in developing the organisation’s “neo-nazi” ideology, which had bid to build a “white supremacist homeland within the UK”.

Prosecutors at his trial described him as “probably the biggest Nazi of the lot”.

It followed conviction of the group’s fellow founder, 32-year-old Ben Raymond, of Swindon, who was found guilty at a separate trial of membership of a banned terrorist group.

Together, Davies and Raymond had worked since the group’s creation in 2013 in spreading an “ideology of hatred”, described as “incredibly dangerous” by counter-terrorism police.

“The risk National Action presented was clear,” said Superintendent Anthony Tagg, head of the West Midlands’ counter-terrorism unit, which led the investigation to break up National Action and Davies’ successor “continuity” group, NS131.

The organisation was outlawed by then home secretary Amber Rudd at the end of 2016, who branded it “racist, antisemitic and homophobic”.

It became the first right-wing organisation to be banned since the Second World War.

Among those convicted of membership since December 2016 have been British soldier and Afghanistan veteran, Finnish-born Mikko Vehvilainen, and former Met probationary police officer Ben Hannam.

One of the group’s associates was convicted of making a working pipe bomb, while another, Jack Renshaw, of Skelmersdale, Lancashire, later admitted plotting to kill MP Rosie Cooper with a machete.

He was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years.

Speaking after Davies’ trial, Mr Tagg said: “We’ve done a huge amount of work... to dismantle that prescribed organisation (and) to bring to justice those who were members of that organisation.

“I can’t sit here today and tell you that there aren’t individuals across the country who still hold extreme right-wing, racist ideological mindsets.

“But what I can assure you is that where where that is found, we will investigate them and we will bring those individuals to justice.”