'Terrorist hiding in plain sight' Alex Davies guilty of Nazi group membership

17 May 2022, 15:55 | Updated: 17 May 2022, 16:23

Swansea man Alex Davies has been found guilty of membership to a banned neo-Nazi group.

The 27-year-old was today convicted by a jury for being a member of National Action (NA) after it was banned in the UK.

Winchester Crown Court heard the group continued to operate in regional factions despite being ordered to disband on 16 December 2016.

Davies, who co-founded NA in Swansea in 2013, was described as "probably the biggest Nazi of the lot" and a "terrorist hiding in plain sight" during the trial.

He will be sentenced in the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey on 7 June.

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Davies later founded a group called the National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action, or NS131, in the south of the country, which he claimed was "not a continuation of" NA and had "different aims".

But prosecutor Barnaby Jameson QC drew parallels between the two groups' names: "The same name - National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action (NS131) – take out the three middle words and you are left with a big clue: National Action."

He added: "Same colours – black and white, colours of Sturmabteilung. Same look of designer Benjamin Raymond, a convicted NA member.

"The same ideology – a throwback to Nazi Germany. The same leader – this defendant, who makes it all happen. Same regional structure – adapted and re-drawn following proscription and so many familiar faces from the old guard."

Mr Jameson said: "Who was at the centre of all this? The founder, the galvaniser, the recruiter, one Alex Davies of Swansea. He was probably the biggest Nazi of the lot... The defendant was an extremist’s extremist."

NS131 was later banned by the British government.

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Davies had his first contact with counter-extremist authorities under Prevent when he was 15 or 16, Mr Jameson added.

"And when in contact he sets up an organisation (NA) in 2013 concerned with the revolutionary overthrow of the democratic order."

Mr Jameson added Davies was "an individual who went on tour to Germany to Buchenwald to give the Nazi salute in teh execution chamber that was a flagrant and provocative breach of German law."

Davies, who told the court he was only "exercising his democratic rights" by setting up NA, and said he "wasn't a violent person".

He said he wanted black, ethnic minority and Jewish people from the UK to be repatriated to make it a whites-only country besides those carrying out "essential" jobs.

Judge Mark Dennis QC adjourned the case following the 11-1 majority guilty verdict and said: "The defendant must appreciate it is inevitable a custodial sentence will follow."