Unmasked: wealthy backers behind far-right league

A property tycoon and a City-based financier quizzed by police over his links to the gunman who slaughtered 69 people in Norway are exposed today as key figures behind the rise of the far-right English Defence League (EDL).

A Sunday Times investigation has revealed that Ann Marchini, a mother from Highgate, north London, and Alan Ayling, a former director of an investment fund, have sought to mould the thuggish anti-Muslim group into a credible political force.

They are both linked to the murky world of the online "counter-jihad" movement from which Anders Behring Breivik drew ideological inspiration before committing his massacre in Norway in July. They have remained in the shadows until now by using aliases on the internet to mask their true identities.

Breivik repeatedly mentioned the EDL in his 1,600-page "manifesto" and once belonged to an Oslo-based offshoot called the Norwegian Defence League.

The EDL, whose support has mushroomed since it was formed in Luton in 2009, has organised a string of protests against what it perceives as the growing "Islamisation" of Britain.

Many have descended into violence perpetrated by a hard core of football hooligans.

However, the "brains" behind the group — which plans to field candidates at the next council elections — come from a different background.

Marchini, who is thought to be in her fifties, runs a buy-to-let property empire from her £1.6m mock-Tudor home in Highgate, a leafy suburb usually associated with liberals.

Marchini, who is believed to be divorced from an Italian banker, operates under at least two aliases: "Gaia", the Earth goddess from Greek mythology, and "Dominique Devaux".

She is said to have helped organise a "pivotal" meeting between EDL figures and anti-jihad thinkers in July 2009 and recently attended a discussion where the EDL agreed to consider an electoral pact with the right-wing British Freedom party (BFP).

A report by Gaia on the BFP website states that Stephen Lennon, the EDL leader, "explained that the EDL need to move up a notch — they cannot go on forever staging street demos. They are still widely perceived as a rabble, and as such cannot possibly obtain funding or be taken seriously by the political class".

Marchini was photographed alongside Lennon, 28, at a far-right demonstration this year and the image was posted on the website of Hope Not Hate, an anti-fascist group. Her name and address also appeared on a leaked list of EDL donors.

The 2009 EDL meeting took place at the £500,000 flat of Ayling in the Barbican in central London. Lennon attended with two relatives from Luton.

Paul Ray, who claims to be a founder of the EDL, was also there. He says he travelled to the venue from Highgate with Marchini, whom he knew at the time as "Ann", "Gaia" or "Dominique". He says he had previously stayed for "a few months" at one of her rental flats on British Street in Bow, east London.

Ray regards the Barbican meeting as "pivotal". "It was the key people being brought together," he said. "It was bringing together the ideological and political side with the boots on the ground."

Two days after the meeting, Ray received an email from "Dominique Devaux", using the account "gaia2600@hotmail.com". "Still very interested in helping EDF [sic] grow as a movement," it stated. It was signed off by "Ann".

Another email, seen by The Sunday Times, gives a mobile number used by Marchini for letting her properties.

Ayling, 57, has been operating under the alias "Alan Lake". He is an IT expert and was a director of Pacific Capital Investment Management until January this year. The fund was dissolved in August.

Last month Ayling was interviewed by officers from Scotland Yard at the behest of Norwegian police who were investigating whether he was a possible "mentor" of Breivik.

Paal-Fredrik Kraby, an Oslo police prosecutor, confirmed that "the man known as Alan Lake" had been questioned. "But his real name is not for us to give to the press," he said.

In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper nine days ago, Lake denied having any contact with Breivik. However, he admitted to having met a prolific anti-Islam blogger called "Fjordman". "People ought to read him, he is good," Lake said. Breivik named Fjordman 111 times in his manifesto.

In the same interview, Lake said Breivik was "wrong", but added the following about Norway's immigration policies: "You let in dangerous people who do not share your values, who will destroy your society and take your freedom. You will have to pay the price for that."

When shown a photograph of Lake last week, two separate sources at the Barbican confirmed that the man in the picture was Ayling. A man inside his flat denied he was Ayling when contacted over the intercom and refused to step outside. Ayling did not respond to a written list of questions.

Norwegian police say Lake was interviewed in London as a "witness". They have also spoken at length to Ray, 35, who voluntarily flew to Oslo to try to clear his name after speculation that he could have unwittingly inspired Breivik.

The Norwegian gunman, 32, who has been declared insane by psychiatrists, claimed in his manifesto that he once had an English mentor called "Richard (the Lionhearted)". Ray, a born-again Christian who subsequently fell out with the EDL, runs a blog called Lionheart.

When The Sunday Times first approached Marchini about her EDL links on November 30, she slammed the door shut on a reporter. Last week, she and her son, Paolo, hung up at least three times when contacted by telephone.

On Friday, a lawyer for Marchini said: "Ann Marchini does not operate under the alias of either Dominique Devaux or Gaia. She is a member of British Freedom, but joined only to show support for her personal friend Paul Weston [the chairman]."

Two names on Dominique Devaux's list of Facebook friends — Paolo and Bianca Marchini — disappeared on the same day.

Weston, a former UK Independence party candidate, said he could not recall befriending Devaux on Facebook. He described Breivik as "a psychopathic lunatic".

Lennon admitted knowing Marchini under the Devaux alias, but denied she was influential. He said Lake was a "nutjob" and had not been involved with the EDL "for ages". Lennon, a former member of the British National party, denied the EDL was racist and said Breivik was "a monster".

The Sunday Times

More Britons face questions over links to Utøya killer Anders Breivik

Blogger Paul Ray in Oslo, where he denied having any links to Anders Breivik.
Photograph: Scanpix Norway/Reuters

Norwegian police say they are to question several British citizens in their search for potential accomplices of mass killer Anders Behring Breivik.

Officers in Oslo said the names of individuals and several far-right groups emerged from questioning of British anti-Muslim blogger Paul Ray as well as further interviews with Breivik.

Police press officer Roar Hanssen said: "We have some names and also some groups we are investigating. They came from Paul Ray, and also from Breivik and also from other things we have been investigating."

Breivik, 32, admitted killing 77 people last month when he detonated a truck bomb outside government offices in Oslo, and then went on a shooting spree at a youth camp at Utøya, 25 miles away.

He was questioned again on Wednesday and prosecutor Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby said officers focused on Breivik's manifesto, his alleged links to a group called the Knights Templar and potential ties to the UK.

Hanssen said: "A lot of people are mentioned in Breivik's manifesto and we, of course, want to speak to them and there are some links to the UK. I don't know if there are specific areas they are from but there are some rightwing groups."

Ray was interviewed last week after claims he may have been the "mentor" mentioned by Breivik in his "manifesto", posted online shortly before he carried out the killings on 22 July.

Ray, who wrote his blog under the name Lionheart, has said it appeared Breivik drew inspiration from some of his ideas and writings, but he has repeatedly denied any link, saying he never met Breivik and was horrified by the killings. He said he travelled to Norway to "clear his name".

Breivik wrote that he attended the founding meeting of the Knights Templar Europe "military order" in London in 2002 where he met a "mentor" who used the pseudonym Richard, after Richard the Lionheart. He signed the 1,500-page document with an anglicised version of his name and datelined it London 2011.

Breivik also repeatedly praised the English Defence League, saying he had 600 EDL supporters as Facebook friends and had spoken with members and leaders. The EDL has condemned the killings and has denied any official contact with Breivik, insisting it is a peaceful, non-racist organisation opposed to extremism.

Kraby said Norwegian police did not have evidence that Breivik had accomplices, but "did not rule out the possibility."

Norwegian officers are now deciding whether to carry out the interviews in the UK or in Norway.

Hanssen said: "We can ask for help from the British police. It is not decided what we will do yet but these are possibilities."

The Guardian

The guns of the EDL

When right wing extremist Anders Breivik went on his murder spree in Oslo last month, attention predictably turned to England and the far-right extremist English Defence League (EDL), the organisation that inspired the killer.

Despite claiming that his organisation had no official contacts with Breivik and that he condemned the actions of the mass murderer, EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon claimed in a number of interviews with journalists that in his opinion, the UK was only five years away from the same sort of right wing outrage happening here.

Up and down the country for the last two years we have witnessed dozens of attacks on Muslim and progressive communities as Lennon's private army of racists grew further and further out of control even encouraged fleetingly, by sections of the national media.

News broke last week that finally, the EDL was to be monitored by the same counter terror unit set up after the 7/7 terror attacks. Hope Not Hate has long called for the EDL to be monitored in the same way that Islamic terror groups are.

We are now publishing these photographs of senior EDL members and activists to prove once and for all for any doubters, that the EDL are not just a pressure group with legitimate concerns about radical Islam. They are the flip side of the same coin.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon says we are five years away from a Breivik styled massacre here. We believe they are already a terror group in the making.












Thanks to Searchlight / HOPE not Hate

The Reality of Right-Wing Nationalism Hits Norway

75 years ago this October, my grandfather, the son of Jewish immigrants to London's poor East End, took to the streets with thousands of others to stop the ultra-nationalist British Union of Fascists from marching through a largely Jewish area.
The event turned into a pitched battle, with Oswald Mosley's fascists and the Metropolitan Police on one side, and locals, Jews, Irish, socialists and communists on the other. The fight (which became known as the Battle of Cable Street) ended with victory for the anti-fascist side, with the fascists and police beaten off the streets.

Following the Holocaust, Fascism became a dirty word, but Nationalists have continually tried to detoxify their brand and reinstate themselves into the mainstream. Mosley returned in the 1950s, this time labelling black immigrants, rather than Jews and Irish, as the main "threat" to the "British way of life". In the late-60s, Conservative MP Enoch Powell became famous for predicting that mass immigration would lead to "rivers of blood". Through the 70s, right-wing nationalism and street-thuggery rose in the form of the National Front, but the movement was resisted on the streets, and finally dissolved in the early-80s as a new, multicultural music scene brought young black and white people together socially. By the 90s, nationalism seemed to be a thing of the past, but the 9/11 attacks gave the racist right a chance to re-brand as an anti-Islam force. Nearly ten years on, and we can see that the "Islam is a threat" message has worked its way from fascist meeting rooms into the political mainstream-right in Europe and the US.

Gradually, the anti-Islam message has morphed back into a more traditional anti-immigration message, being amplified by the right-wing tabloid press here (and Fox News in the US). The nationalist, anti-immigration message isn't easy to sell; it relies on persuading people that the past (or rather, an imaginary, idyllic past) is being replaced by a more dangerous future as immigrants join their society. Prior to 9/11 it seemed that the Western World had moved beyond irrational fear of foreigners, and that society's liberal tendencies had prevailed; but we soon learned that race hate and xenophobia weren't far beneath the surface; that US and European society had changed less since the 1940s than we'd convinced ourselves.

When the drum of fear and hate is being pounded consistently, the infection will naturally spread. For most fear-infected morons, the outlet of Twitter or a blog is enough. But it's inevitable that angry or mentally-disturbed individuals like Anders Behring Breivik will become infected too, and violence will follow, as it did last Friday in Norway. Breivik's choice of target, the mainstream, liberal Norwegian Labour Party, was a natural one for anyone understanding the history of European nationalism. He chose a multicultural youth camp, something designed to ease racial tensions in Norway, but also proof (in Breivik's confused world view) that evil forces were trying to dilute Norway's racial and cultural past into something new and alien.

Whether Breivik acted alone, it can be stated with certainty that he was influenced by master-manipulators of the nationalist movement. It's already been established from his own blog (English translation provided by @Dilmunite) that he admired the far-right English Defence League; according to many EDL Facebook posts, Breivik had many EDL Facebook friends, and attended an EDL rally in the UK in 2010. I'd recommend following @BanTheEDL and @EverythingEDL on Twitter for a collection of evidence linking group members with Breivik.

Another key Breivik influencer was someone I've often mentioned: Pamela Geller, a self-appointed "defender" of America against "creeping Islamification". Pamela spent the weekend tweeting new myths distancing herself from the terrorist, for her army of moron followers to disseminate.

In my Twitter feed, I've long watched morons large and small disseminate misinformation about Islam, Muslims and immigration. Their purpose was to spread enough hatred widely enough that sooner or later someone would take action, and set a chain of violence underway. It looks as though they found a new disciple (though not their first - right-wing terror plots have long been of concern, especially in the US), and no doubt other "white heroes" are watching and contemplating whether to follow Breivik's example (as was clearly his intention).

Western governments now need to decide whether Islamaphobic lies and smears equate to hate speech, and whether to prosecute the most virulent of these liars. The shock following the Norway attacks will quickly pass, and lack of action against armchair-nationalist morons by governments will result in more confidence in the nationalist movements, and inevitably more violence.

Many thanks to Moron Watch for this article.

Reclassify the EDL

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to learn any lessons of the appalling events in Norway to ensure that this country is "more secure against horrific outrageous like this".

He could make a start by ordering the Home Office to reclassify the English Defence League. Despite the violence and racial hatred whipped up by this street gang the authorities refuse to label the group as "far-right extremists". As a result the police do not monitor the group like they do dozens of Muslim organisations and take little interest in its activities. One police officer who has responsibility for monitoring extremists recently told us that the EDL was only an issue when it had a knock-on effect on Islamist extremist groups.

With evidence pointing to Anders Breivik's admiration for the EDL and an increasingly militant tone being taken by EDL units across Britain, surely it is time for the authorities finally to take this threat seriously.

I'll be writing more about this shortly but let's hope it doesn't take an atrocity for the authorities finally to act against the EDL.

Thanks to Nick Lowles at HOPE not Hate/Searchlight