Two men who have declared their goal of exterminating Jews from Britain have begun their trial in a Liverpool Crown Court.
Aryan Strike Force members Michael Heaton and Trevor Hannington, two “proud neo-Nazis,” have been accused of soliciting people to murder Jews through their website.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis said, “Each of these men is proud to call himself a National Socialist, or a neo-Nazi in other language.”
“Each is a member of an organization called the Aryan Strike Force, whose goal it is to clear the country of all ethnic minorities, as they say, whatever it takes.”
Heaten posted over three thousand posts on the website between January and June 2008, according the court. Four of the postings explicitly called for the murder of Jews, including one saying that Jews “will always be scum, destroy 'em with whatever it takes.” In another post, he wrote, “I would encourage any religion or race that wants to destroy the Jews, I hate them with a passion.”
It was these two comments that the prosecution has argued encourages the murder of Jews.
“It's what he wanted to achieve when he put that on a forum on a website that matters,” Edis said.
Hannington has already pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred, publishing racist material online, and possessing literature deemed useful to terrorists, including Anarchist’s Cookbook, Kitchen Complete and The Terrorist Encyclopedia. He also pleaded guilty to writing that Jews were “parasites feeding on others” and “utterly evil sub-beings.”
Mr. Edis said his guilty pleas show he should “be taken seriously.”
Now closed, the Aryan Strike Force website changed its name first to Legion 88 and then to Wolfpack. The number 8 refers to the eighth letter in the alphabet, H, standing for HH, or Heil Hitler.
Both Heaton and Hannington used “88” when they posted comments on the website. “These are the descriptions they gave themselves. It's how they wish to be named,” the prosecutor said.
