BNP election hopes marred by dodgy fascist pals of leader Nick Griffin

Convicted criminals, Nazi skinheads, violent thugs... not exactly the type of people you'd want to be pals with. But this motley crew of racists and fascists are Nick Griffin's closest European buddies.

The BNP leader is trying his best to project the image of a respectable, well dressed politician in the run-up to the European elections on Thursday. And he knows that, if people find out who he likes to hang out with, his chances will be ruined.

Here we expose the truth about the BNP's European friends...

AUSTRIA

Andreas Molzer - once booted out of Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO) for being too extreme - is one of Griffin's closest European allies.

The Austrian MEP runs a newspaper, renowned for spouting racist, xenophonic and anti-Semitic views. The rag - Zur Zeit - has even questioned accepted accounts of the Holocaust and recently featured a fawning interview with Griffin.

Molzer, 57, who is married with five children, was expelled from the FPO in 2005 after he accused it of being too soft on immigration. He was only let back in last year when fellow hard-liner Heinz-Christian Strache, 50, took over the leadership. Strache, 50, has demanded the repeal of Austrian laws banning the swastika and once branded women wearing Islamic dress as "female ninjas".

ITALY

Italian MEP Roberto Fiore is leader of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party, which has campaigned for the expulsion of an estimated 150,000 Roma gipsies from Italy.

He has been a political mentor, financial supporter and close friend of BNP leader Griffin since 1980, when he moved to Britain in the wake of the fascist Bologna railway station bombing which killed 85 people, including two British tourists.

While here, he helped Griffin - who hadn't yet joined the BNP - set up his Political Soldiers group after it split from the National Front.

Fiore was convicted in Italy in his absence in 1985 as a result of his involvement in the terrorist Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, whose members had taken part in the Bologna terrorist outrage. His nine year prison sentence was later reduced to five and a half on appeal.

HUNGARY

Zoltan Fuzessy is vice president of Hungary's ultra right-wing Jobbik party - but lives in the UK and has fostered close links with the BNP. The father-of-two ran an anti-Jewish hate website until last year and has spoken at BNP meetings.

Jobbik - Movement for a Better Hungary - uses Nazi insignia and has been linked to a deadly series of grenade, petrol bomb and gun attacks on Hungarian gipsies. But all that did not stop Griffin speaking in front of 5,000 Jobbik supporters last year at a rally in Budapest, where he shared a stage with notorious Hungarian racist Gyorgy Budahazy.

When a bunch of fascist yobs were arrested after going on the rampage Griffin toured the police stations where they were being held. The BNP leader insisted he was trying to ensure they were given "due process" and decent treatment.

Last year Budahazy showed his true colours when issuing a joint communique with another fascist leader, Laszlo Toroczkai, calling on Hungarian racists to disrupt the annual Budapest gay parade.

"We will not permit aberrant foreigners of this or that colour to force their alien and sick world on Hungary," it said.

GERMANY

Nick Griffin's BNP aligns itself with the pro-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany whose chairman, Udo Voigt, praises Hitler as a "great statesman".

In August 2002 Griffin attended a festival put on by the NPD's newspaper Deutsche Stimme (German Voice), where he was photographed with Voigt and the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. That month he took part in an NPD summer school with Mahler and Voigt.

Another German ally of BNP is Nazi skinhead leader Jens Puhse, who was recently acquitted of producing and distributing racist CDs. A member of the National Front until it was banned in 1997, he is now leader of the German National Democratic Party and a leading figure in the European National Front (ENF), an umbrella group for some of Europe's most extreme and openly facist organisations.

They include groups that deny the Holocaust, worship Adolf Hitler and other wartime fascist leaders, and have been linked to terrorism.

FRANCE

The BNP admires the National Front and has modelled much of its own modernisation on the resurgent French fascist party. Its leader, Jean Marie Le Pen, served in Algeria in the 1950s and has been accused of torturing prisoners there.

A convicted Holocaust denier, Penn - who is divorced with three daughters - has also been convicted of racism or inciting racial hatred at least six times. In June 1999 he was fined for stating that the Holocaust was "just a detail in the history of the Second World War" and in April 2000 he was fined again and suspended from the European Parliament for assaulting a female candidate from a rival party during an election campaign.

Le Pen was Griffin's star guest during the BNP's European campaign in April 2004. After he claimed that Britain was being "invaded" by the Third World at a press conference in Manchester, protesters hurled rocks and eggs at his car.

Griffin's attention has now turned to Bruno Gollnisch, Le Pen's deputy, who is challenging Le Pen's daughter for leadership of the FN. Gollnisch, who is married with three children, has also been convicted for denying the Holocaust, for which he spent three months in prison in 2007.

Griffin brought Gollnisch over to Britain in April last year, where he addressed a private gathering of BNP supporters in London.

SWEDEN

The leader of Sweden's fascist National Democrats (ND) party was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2003 for assault and rioting after he and a fascist mob attacked a Gay Pride festival in Stockholm.

Marc Abramsson also runs the socalled Action Group (AKG), which provides security for Swedish fascist meetings and visiting fascists such as Griffin. This heavy mob is largely composed of members of the nazi Blood and Honour network.

Griffin has forged a close relationship with the ND leader, helping the party in European election campaigns. Abramsson was ND candidate in the 2004 European election.

BELGIUM

Filip Dewinter leads Belgium's far-right nationalist party Vlaams Belang (Flemmish Interest), which took over from the Vlaams Blok party after it was found in contempt of the law on racism and xenophobia and banned.

At a meeting of Vlaams Blok in 1991, former journalist Dewinter proclaimed: "Our own people first! And yes, Vlaams Blok chooses a Flemish Flanders. And yes, Vlaams Blok chooses a white Europe!" Griffin's most recent public contact with VB was in December 2006 when he went to Belgium to attend the "Euro-Rus Congress", a pan-European event organised by VB's Kris Romain.

CZECH

Republic Leader of the far-right National Party (Narodni Strana), which has its own paramilitary squad, Petra Edelmannova was the brains behind a racist TV ad aired in the Czech Republic last month which called for a "final solution" to the issue of gipsies in her country.

In the broadcast, accompanied by the slogan "Stop Favouring Gipsies", she stresses the case for "repatriating the Czech Republic's entire Roma community to India".

An avid racist, she was arrested in October 2006 following a demonstration in Prague's Wenceslas Square under a banner reading "Let's incinerate Muslim hatred". She had handed out leaflets illustrated with caricatures of Muslim figures and the caption "Let's Burn Hatred".

Last August Edelmannova, who is married with a daughter, gave a speech at the BNP's Red, White and Blue festival in Codnor, Derbys. Two months later, Griffin repaid the favour by addressing a National Party rally where he railed against the accession of Turkey to the EU, saying that the introduction of millions of Muslims into the EU would "drive down wages, living standards and increase taxes".

Daily Mirror