A white supremacist British couple, who named their son after the leader of Nazi Germany, has been found guilty of being members of a UK banned 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 he 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.”
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.