County Durham terror plot father and son are jailed

Ian (left) and Nicky Davison

A neo-Nazi who made the poison ricin and plotted to overthrow the government has been jailed for 10 years

Police found the deadly chemical when they raided Ian Davison's home in Burnopfield, County Durham, last June. The 41-year-old admitted producing a chemical weapon, preparing for acts of terrorism and having terror handbooks. His son Nicky, 19, who was convicted of possessing material useful for acts of terror, was detained for two years at a young offenders' institution.

The pair, who had earlier been tried separately at Newcastle Crown Court, set up and ran the Aryan Strike Force (ASF) website.

Ian Davison created ricin at his home in 2006 or early 2007, Andrew Edis QC, prosecuting, said. It was found when police raided the property in June last year and is now stored at the UK's Porton Down chemical weapons centre. The court heard that Ian Davison researched how to make the killer chemical and then followed instructions, having bought its easily-sourced ingredients.

Passing sentence, Judge John Milford told the father: "A particularly unpleasant aggravating feature of this case is that you corrupted your son."

Mr Edis said: "He was a leading member of the ASF which was a neo-Nazi organisation dedicated to using violence. Its slogan was 'Whatever it takes'. The purpose of the violence was the creation of an international Aryan group which would establish white supremacy in 'white' countries. They were followers of the ideology of Adolf Hitler, who they revered, and whose work Mein Kampf was among many available on their website."

Mr Edis said the ASF had about 350 members recruited via the internet, though not all were active. Other alleged members will face trial later this year.

Mr Edis said: "This defendant intended to perpetrate acts of terrorism. The ricin which he made would be used in pursuit of the cause espoused by the group."

The Crown said the group had not picked out particular targets, but had run a training camp in Cumbria and made promotional films. The ASF, also known as the Wolf Pack, aimed to overthrow "Zionist" governments and considered itself to be the UK's most right-wing group. Davison Snr was in contact with a Nazi in Serbia and the pair discussed poisoning water supplies used by Muslims, Mr Edis said. Davison Snr possessed many copies of terror guidebooks such as the Anarchist's Cookbook and made them available for download.

Toby Hedworth QC, defending, said a psychological report showed Davison Snr was a "super-wimp not a savage" who had a "fragile ego".

Peter Carter QC, for Davison Jnr, said his client was of previous good character and had been corrupted by his father. He has now thrown away any chance of an Army career, the court heard. The judge said he accepted the son had been influenced by his father.

"But you were actively in the website and expressed on it the same vile, racist views as your father," he said. "I accept you knew nothing of the ricin."

Judge Milford also expressed surprise that the Anarchist's Cookbook was still available to buy on the Amazon website and asked the authorities to look into it.

Outside court, Det Supt Neil Malkin, of Durham Police, said he wanted terror manuals removed from the internet.

"This is a landmark case and will bring the attention of the authorities at a national level to the need to restrict these documents," he said.

He said just downloading the Anarchist's Cookbook from the internet was an offence. He added: "Ian Davison was only one step away from producing a terrorist event."

The Crown Prosecution Service said Ian Davison was the first man in England and Wales to be convicted of a terrorism-related offence involving ricin. Counter terrorism division lawyer Stuart Laidlaw said the pair were "Nazi zealots" who believed in white supremacy and revered Adolf Hitler. He said: "They hated minority ethnic groups, be they black, Asian, Muslim or Jewish."

He added that 10 fatal doses of ricin were found in Ian Davison's house, all of which were made by him.

BBC

Families flee after attacks by racist mob

A number of Romanian families have been been forced from their homes in Belfast in recent days by a racist mob claiming to be from the fascist group Combat 18, it can be revealed.

Their south Belfast homes came under sustained attack from Thursday evening, with their windows smashed and doors kicked in by crowds of thugs gathering outside shouting racist slogans. One family fled from their home in Belgravia Avenue. Another family, with a newborn baby, has been left terrified after their home at Wellesley Avenue came under attack just days after they were forced out of another property.

A number of local residents last night stood guard outside their new home in a bid to protect them. One local resident, Paddy Meehan, said: “About 12 of us worked in shifts to defend the house last night. Local residents think these people have to be defended. These thugs have been shouting that they are Combat 18 and they dropped a letter containing text from Hitler’s Mein Kampf through the letterbox of one of the properties.

“This has been going on for several nights. Sometimes there is about 20 of them gathering outside the properties. There is a hardcore of maybe six or seven shouting abuse and kicking doors down. These families are terrified, so are all their young children. They feel very isolated which is why the local community is gathering around them to support them,” he added.

The PSNI said police in south Belfast are investigating a number of racist attacks and criminal damage to properties and a car in Wellesley Avenue and Belgravia Avenue on a number of occasions between June 11 and 14. A spokeswoman added: “A crowd gathered on each occasion at the properties and a number of windows were smashed. Police have not received reports of any injuries.”

Residents in south Belfast are planning to stage a protest outside the Mace shop on the Lisburn Road this evening to show their support for the Romanian families and to call for an end to the racist attacks. These attacks come at a time of increased racial tensions in Northern Ireland.

The PSNI’s annual crime statistics have shown that incidents of racism, which range from verbal abuse to physical attacks, are continuing to rise across the province. Almost 1,000 incidents were reported to police within the space of 12 months. Earlier this year more than 40 foreign nationals were intimidated out of their homes in Belfast over a two-week period.

The Polish Association said in April that, following violent clashes between Northern Ireland and Polish football fans before a World Cup qualifier at Windsor Park, 46 people fled the Village area of south Belfast and Albertbridge Road area in the east of the city because of physical abuse and attacks on property.

Belfast Telegraph

Neo-Nazi ringleader pleads guilty to assault, gets jailtime

The leader of a neo-Nazi gang from Petah Tikva was convicted yesterday in a plea bargain under which his sentence will range from four to seven and a half years in prison.

Arik Buniatov, 20, was convicted on several counts of aggravated assault for racist motives, ordinary assault, battery, threats, incitement to racism, conspiracy to commit a crime and possession of racist material. Another member of the gang, a minor, was also convicted under the plea bargain; he will be sentenced to a prison term of up to two and half years.

Altogether, eight members of Buniatov's gang were indicted for having attacked foreign workers, homeless people and Orthodox Jews while shouting neo-Nazi slogans. The gang also documented their attacks on video.

In one incident, for instance, the gang attacked a drug addict near Tel Aviv's Carmel Market and forced him to go down on his knees and beg pardon for being a Jew. They then posted a video of the incident on YouTube and the neo-Nazi Web site Format 18.

After the verdict was read out in the Tel Aviv District Court, Buniatov's lawyer, Shimshon Weiss, told reporters: "He is very sorry for what happened."

Weiss argued that Buniatov had had a difficult life, having immigrated to Israel at age 9 and later dropped out of school. "He was an alien plant in Israel," Weiss said. "He was searching for an identity, and it was easy for him to connect to an ideology that empowered him - a difficult and disgraceful ideology that none of us can identify with."

Buniatov was considered the leader of the gang, and the one who urged the others to adopt a neo-Nazi ideology and engage in violence.

The indictment detailed e-mails in which he boasted to other gang members of having carried out an aktion against Arabs (aktion is the word used by the Nazis for anti-Jewish pogroms); of holding a ceremony on Hitler's birthday in which he swore allegiance to the Nazi leader; and of his success in obtaining a Russian translation of Hitler's book Mein Kampf. In one e-mail, he said, "The Fuehrer was right about the Jews, but they finished him off."

Four other members of the gang were convicted in a separate plea bargain about a month ago; that deal called for them to receive sentences ranging from 15 months to four and a half years. The remaining two defendants are currently in advanced negotiations to conclude their own plea bargains with the prosecution.

Haaretz

BNP boss Richard Barnbrook cheats on Brit with IMMIGRANT

Dickie Barnbrook's unlikely ménage

BNP frontman Richard Barnbrook has been cheating on his ballerina fiancée... with a FOREIGN NURSE.

The racist ranter —bidding to be London mayor—was secretly bedding Finn Annika Tavilampi when he proposed to English National Ballet star Simone Clarke. Barnbrook—who studies Hitler—ADVANCED on Annika, 28, after spotting her on an online dating site, BLITZED her with filthy texts and pictures— and asked her to MARRY him too.

"Richard sent me photos of his private parts before I'd even met him," says the redhead. "I thought this was very odd for a politician."

She only discovered the full depths of the London councillor's extremism when she found a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf under his bed.

"If I'd known before that he was a sleazebag I probably wouldn't have gone anywhere near him," says Annika. "He was average in bed. And then there was his drinking—I've only ever seen him properly sober a couple of times. But I still fell for him."

Barnbrook, 47, caused a storm when he began dating principal dancer Simone after it was revealed she'd joined the BNP last year. She was then investigated by the English National Ballet over her anti-immigrant views and is set to leave. He proposed to Simone over a romantic candlelit dinner. But all the time Barnbrook—whose mayoral campaign pledge is to "remove" London's one million immigrants—was planning to remove a particular immigrant's knickers.

"We'd started chatting on Dating Direct, then he started sending me sex texts straight away," says Annika. "He wanted me to send him explicit pictures. I told him it sounded like he just wanted sex and I wanted a relationship. He said he wanted the same as me."

The Barking and Dagenham councillor kept his relationship with Simone a firm secret from Annika when she began romping with him at his flat in Blackheath, south-east London.

"I had no idea he was using me. He'd talk a lot about sex but also about marriage and children," says Annika. He even sent her a text saying: "If you still like me! And we get on! I would like to get married! x. He's not the most skilful or active lover I've had, but I loved him so much it made up for it— even though the only time he took me out was to a Wetherspoon's."

Brazen Barnbrook even tried to get the nurse from London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to appear on an election campaign leaflet for the BNP. "He wanted an example of an NHS nurse who supported him. I refused." The turning point in their relationship came in November when Simone found out.

"I got a text from his phone saying, ‘Hello Annika I am Richard's girlfriend. Why are you texting him?' I texted back that I was under the impression I was his girlfriend," says Annika.

The next day Barnbrook sent her a text dumping her. But the sneaky cheat bedded her again when she collected her things from his place—and the last time in December when he asked her to help him move to a flat in Dagenham.

"I stayed with him again and we had sex. While sorting stuff out, I even found a copy of Mein Kampf under his bed. As I'm not British, the BNP didn't mean that much to me. But I'm certainly not a supporter."

Then Annika read in the papers about Barnbrook and Simone and confronted him.

"The article said he'd proposed to Simone at the same time he proposed to me," she says. "I can't believe how devious he's been."

Now her love for Barnbrook is like any faint chance he had in the race for London Mayor. Finnished.

News of the World

BNP's Griffin speaks

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Spectre of fascism grows as neo-Nazis go on trial for burning Anne Frank’s diary

Ceremonial book-burning offers grim reminder of country’s dark past

Germany's growing neo-Nazi threat hit home last week when suspected radical right-wingers went on trial for burning a copy of Anne Frank's diary and an American flag.

Seven men, aged between 24 and 29, are accused of inciting racial hatred, denying the Holocaust and glorifying the Nazis. If found guilty, they face five years behind bars, a sentence that director of the Anne Frank Centre in Berlin, Thomas Heppner, believes should be meted out in full.

He said: "I felt ill during the case: the way five of the accused remained silent and Lars Konrad admitted burning the famous book. But I just felt so ill when he claimed that he did it to free himself of the burden of Germany's past'."

Heppner asked: "If that were the case, then why didn't they burn Hitler's Mein Kampf?"

In its statement, the state prosecutors' office said that "by using clear-cut neo-Nazi and Nazi terminology, the men had not just mocked Anne Frank, who died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 16, but also all the other millions of Nazi victims".

The book-burning took place in Pretzien, a picturesque little town in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Its mayor, Friedrich Harwig, says his community has been torn apart by the the trial. Last June a summer solstice party in the town turned ugly when the accused men allegedly threw the flag and then the book into the ceremonial bonfire while shouting chants reminiscent of the 1933 Nazi book-burnings, which were organised across the country to rid the Third Reich of all "degenerate books"

As a key witness, Harwig gave his evidence on Wednesday. He was at the party along with around 100 townsfolk. Following allegations from his Social Democratic Party (SPD) that the burnings were an "assault on human culture" and that Harwig should have attempted to stop them, he resigned from the SPD. He says he will stand for mayor again next year as an independent.

"It was an awful night, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone to experience something of that kind. The answer is to speak openly about things: without dialogue, we can't hope for an improvement in the radical right-wing situation," he said.

But this incident is just "the tip of an iceberg", argues Bernd Wagner from Exit-Germany, the organisation which works at rehabilitating right-wingers so they can get back into "normal" society. Wagner works closely on grassroots projects with a number of people from Pretzien, together with the mayor and community groups to find a "democratic way out of the mess".

The problem, according to Wagner, is that there is a slow but growing trend towards radicalism. The perpetrators are not always unemployed, socially marginalised individuals. "Many in Pretzien have good, well-paid jobs," he added.

Many Germans believe such cases serve only to throw small insignificant groupings into the limelight. Wagner said: "If one tries to use community service as punishment, this is also a problem, because many of the neo-Nazis are fantastic with their social involvement - whether it's organising a festival or being the first to be on hand to assist during the flooding of the Elbe. Social help just gives them another way of propagating their Nazi beliefs."

Thomas Heppner argues that while the law can't change society, he hopes that the publicity will help Germans to see what's allowed and what's not. "Families and teachers must realise the threat of the neo-Nazis," he said.

The case, presided over by Judge Hans-EIke Bruns, is due to end by mid-March. State prosecutor Uwe Hornburg, who has been in his job for 20 years, said he has never been so shocked by a case, despite the state of Brandenburg, which borders Saxony-Anhalt, having the highest rate of right-wing radicalism in Germany. Last week's publication of Germany's constitutional protection report for 2006 showed that the number of crimes with right-wing backgrounds has grown over the past year to a total of 1399.

Sunday Herald