'Miss Buchenwald' sentenced for joining banned neo-Nazi group

Alice Cutter was sentenced with three others at Birmingham Crown Court, UK, for being a member of banned neo-Nazi group National Action.

By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS
A man wearing a Swastika [Illustrative] (photo credit: CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS)
A man wearing a Swastika [Illustrative]
(photo credit: CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS)
Four "diehard" members of a banned neo-Nazi terror organization, including a former Miss Hitler beauty pageant contest, have been jailed for continuing their activities following the ban.
Alice Cutter, 23, was sentenced to three years in prison by Birmingham Crown Court, England, for her activities in National Action, which included trying unsuccessfully to recruit 15- and 16-year-old girls. The court heard that she had also joked about gassing synagogues and using a Jew's head as a football.
Her ex-fiance Mark Jones, 25, received a five and a half year sentence. Nicknamed "Grand Daddy Terror," by other members of National Action, Jones was described at the trial as a "leader and strategist" who played a "prominent and active role" in the covert organization.
The couple, who split after Jones cheated on Cutter with a schoolgirl they were trying to recruit, were sentenced alongside Connor Scothern, 19, who was "considered future leadership material" by other members, and Garry Jack, 24, who was described by the court as an "out and out fanatic" who yearned to be part of a "revolution." Scothern was handed an 18-month sentence, while Jack was ordered to serve four-and-a-half years.
Prosecutor Barnaby Jameson QC described them as "a secretive group of diehard neo-Nazis with no compunction whatever of obtaining their objectives through terror," the Daily Mail has reported. "They are a group with admiration for Hitler and advocation of the Holocaust. A group with a shared enthusiasm for ethnic cleansing and eradication of the Jews.
"You will be forgiven for thinking that the ideology of Hitler had died out at Nuremberg. You would be wrong. For the accused, Hitler's work will always be unfinished. This is a group for which the final solution to the Jewish question remains to be annihilation," he added.
NATIONAL ACTION was banned in December 2016 after urging supporters to emulate the killing of Member of Parliament Jo Cox, who was stabbed to death in her constituency. Then-home secretary Amber Rudd described the group as "racist, antisemitic and homophobic" when banning it, making National Action the first neo-Nazi group to be proscribed since World War II.
The group released a "strategy and promotion" document in September 2013, detailing their ambition to "make way for National Socialism to enter British politics," according to the paper. Jones, a former member of the British National Front's youth wing, was instrumental in keeping the group running following the ban, the court heard. During the trial, Jones admitted to having posed for a photograph holding a National Action flag and delivering a Nazi salute while standing in the execution room at Buchenwald, during a trip to the former concentration camp in 2016.
Cutter was recruited into the group by Alex Deakin, 24, after they met on Facebook. In court, she described how she was encouraged to enter a Miss Hitler competition, run by National Action's founder Ben Raymond, under the name 'Miss Buchenwald.'
"I had it mentioned to me a couple of times and I thought it sounded kind of stupid and didn't think it was worth doing because I didn't see myself entering any kind of competition," Cutter told Birmingham Crown Court. "Anyway I did because I found myself asked quite a few times by Deakin. He asked very persistently."
She added: "I had just made some new friends and thought they might be different to people I had met in the past and I didn't want to cock it up by not doing that."
Cutter admitted to holding racist views, and of being a member of National Action until its ban. During sentencing, Judge Paul Farrer QC described Cutter as an "intelligent and strong-minded woman" who had advised the group's leadership on training and security.
Following National Action's ban, the members exchanged encrypted racist and antisemitic messages in Telegram groups named Triple K Mafia - a reference to the Ku Klux Klan - and Inner Circle to continue their activities unabated. During this time, Scothern handed out over 1,500 stickers calling for a "final solution," a reference to the Holocaust, while members posed for photographs with guns and knives emblazoned with swastikas.
National Action were working to "prepare for a race war by amassing weapons and trying to recruit others by the spread of their extreme ideology," Detective Chief Superintendent Kenny Bell from the West Midland Counter-Terrorism Unit told the court.


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Neo-Nazi
counterterrorism