National Action Trial: Two Found Guilty Of Being In Banned Neo-Nazi Group

Adam Thomas and Claudia Patatas were convicted at Birmingham Crown Court.
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Adam Thomas and Claudia Patatas have been convicted at Birmingham Crown Court of being neo-Nazi terrorist group members
SWNS

A “fanatical” neo-Nazi couple who named their baby son after Hitler have been convicted of membership of a banned terrorist group.

Adam Thomas, 22, and Claudia Patatas, 38, were found guilty of being members of the extreme organisation National Action, which was banned in 2016.

Photographs showed Thomas cradling his newborn son while wearing the hooded white robes of a Ku Klux Klansman.

In conversation with another National Action member, Patatas said “all Jews must be put to death”, while Thomas told his partner, in a separate conversation, that he found “all non-whites are intolerable”.

A jury at Birmingham Crown Court was told the couple had given their child the middle name “Adolf”, and that they had decorated their home with swastika scatter cushions.

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Adam Thomas wearing the hooded white robe of a Ku Klux Klansman, holding his newborn baby at home
West Midlands Police/ PA

A third defendant – a leading member in National Action’s Midlands’ chapter, Daniel Bogunovic, 27, of Crown Hills Rise, Leicester, was also convicted of membership.

A former Amazon security guard, Thomas was also convicted of having a copy of a document likely to be of use to a terrorist, namely the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

Thomas’s close friend Darren Fletcher, 28, of Kitchen Lane, Wednesfield, West Midlands, together with Joel Wilmore, 24, of Bramhall Road, Stockport, Greater Manchester, and Nathan Pryke, 26, of Dartford Road, March, Cambridgeshire, all admitted National Action membership before the trial.

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Patatas leaving Birmingham Crown Court on Monday
Amardeep Bassey

Trial judge, the Recorder of Birmingham Melbourne Inman QC, told Bogunovic, Patatas and Thomas they would be sentenced together in a two-day hearing beginning on Friday December 14, and concluding on the Monday.

Bogunovic and Thomas were remanded in custody, while a tearful Patatas, who is still nursing her baby, was granted conditional bail. 

Turning to the jury, who deliberated for more than 12 hours, the judge added: “Thank you very much for your hard work.”