In KKK robes, father who named his baby ‘Adolf ’
‘Family album of neo-Nazi parents’ shown to far-Right trial jury
‘Fanatical and highly motivated’
A NEO-Nazi father wore the hooded white robes of the Ku Klux Klan to pose for a photograph with his baby – which he had named after Hitler, a court heard.
Adam Thomas, 22, was also pictured next to a swastika flag with his partner, Claudia Patatas, 38.
In another image shown to jurors, she holds their baby, which has the middle name Adolf, while a man, said to be Thomas, gives a Nazi salute.
The couple are on trial accused of being members of National Action, a far-Right group banned in December 2016 after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. The group were fanatical white supremacists, jurors were told.
Thomas also faces a separate charge of having a terrorist document, the Anarchy Cookbook, which contained bomb-making instructions.
Yesterday, jurors at Birmingham Crown Court were shown the series of pictures from what was described as the ‘Thomas Patatas family album’.
The image allegedly showing Thomas in a KKK robe holding his baby was described by prosecutor Barnaby Jameson QC. He said: ‘There is a strong inference… that that was taken inside their home, and that the person in the robes was Thomas.’
During a search in January of the couple’s semi-detached home in Banbury, Oxfordshire, police found a host of Nazi and far-Right items, the jury was told, including a swastika pastry cutter, cushions and armbands and far-Right uniforms.
Two machetes were also found, along with an axe under the couple’s bed, it is alleged.
A poster was stuck to their fridge, the prosecutor said, which read ‘Britain is ours – the rest must go’ while a greetings card on a sideboard of the living room featured KKK figures and read: ‘May all your Christmases be white.’
The search also uncovered the digital copy of the Anarchist Cookbook, the jury heard. Press cuttings relating to the Norwegian far-Right mass murderer Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, were found in the couple’s living room.
It emerged in court that counter-terrorism officers had also visited the couple’s home in October last year ‘due to concerns Miss Patatas may be involved in the extreme Right-wing’.
It is alleged that in a message, she said: ‘All Jews must be put to death,’ while Thomas told his partner, in a separate conversation, that he ‘found that all non-whites are intolerable’.
In one online message in February last year Patatas said she would kill mixed-race children if she was told to, the court heard.
The couple are on trial along with Daniel Bogunovic, 27, of Leicester, who is also accused of being a member of National Action.
Following its ban, the prosecution allege the group tried to ‘shed one skin for another’ to evade scrutiny and that the defendants were part of a successor organisation called the Triple K Mafia. It is alleged that this was National Action in all but name.
Mr Jameson said: ‘All the defendants in this case, along with those that have pleaded guilty or been convicted, were cut from the same National Action cloth. They were fanatical, highly motivated, energetic, closely linked and mobile.
‘And they all had, we say, a similar interest in ethnic cleansing, with violence if necessary.’
National Action was the first extreme Right-wing group to be banned under terror laws, which mean it is a crime, punishable by a maximum ten years in prison, to be a member or supporter.
It had links to Thomas Mair, the 54-year-old white supremacist who murdered Mrs Cox in Birstall, West Yorkshire, in June 2016.
The group held a Miss Englandstyle online competition in the run up to the EU referendum – called Miss Hitler. Mr Jameson said it was a bid to generate publicity.
Detective Constable Matthew Fletcher, a counter terrorism officer, told the court that members trained in Wales at what they called ‘white Jihad’ camps. He said National Action ‘rejects democracy. It’s enemies are ethnic minorities, “race traitors”, the LGBT community and the Jewish community’. The group, which had at most 50 members, first came to attention because of its online activities.
All three defendants deny wrongdoing. The trial continues.