A neo-Nazi couple who named their child after Adolf Hitler have been found guilty Monday of being part of a banned right-wing group in England.
Adam Thomas, 22, and Claudia Patatas, 38, were convicted at Birmingham Crown Court in the country’s West Midlands region for being members of the extreme right-wing organization, National Action. The group was banned in 2016.
According to the UK’s Press Association news agency, the court heard that the couple gave their child the middle name “Adolf” after Hitler, because of Thomas’ “admiration” for him.
Photos were also recovered from the couple’s home that showed Thomas dressed in the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan while holding his son, according to PA.
The jury were also shown a tattoo Patatas has, which reproduces an intricate floor design from inside a former SS headquarters at Wewelsburg Castle in Germany, PA said.
The court heard how members of National Action had several methods to disguise their contact with each other and used closed encrypted messaging platforms to organize meetings to spread their ideology.
The group was banned by the UK’s former home secretary, Amber Rudd, after she called it “racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic.”
Rudd added that it is an “organization which stirs up hatred, glorifies violence, and promotes a vile ideology, and I will not stand for it. It has absolutely no place in a Britain that works for everyone.”
The group was outlawed after it had celebrated the murder of Labour Party member of Parliament Jo Cox.
As part of the same trial, 27-year-old Daniel Bogunovic was also found guilty for being part of the group and three other men admitted they were members prior to the case, West Midlands Police said.
The couple and the four other men will be sentenced in December, PA reported.
Speaking after the verdict, the head of West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, Matt Ward, said those convicted “were not simply racist fantasists.”
“We now know they were a dangerous, well-structured organization,” he said in a statement on the West Midlands Police website.
“Their aim was to spread neo-Nazi ideology by provoking a race war in the UK and they had spent years acquiring the skills to carry this out. They had researched how to make explosives. They had gathered weapons … Unchecked they would have inspired violence and spread hatred and fear across the West Midlands.”
Ward said that the convictions dealt a significant blow to National Action. “We have dismantled their Midlands Chapter but that doesn’t mean the threat they pose will go away,” he added.
So far, a total of 10 people have either been convicted or admitted they are members of National Action, according to PA.