Home Secretary Priti Patel is taking steps to proscribe an American neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division (AWD), as a terrorist organization, with prison sentences for those found to be members of it.
 
Ms Patel said that she wanted “to protect young and vulnerable people from being radicalised”. AWD has been linked to five murders in the US and has been cited by prosecutors in the UK as an influence on a number of teenagers subsequently convicted of terror offences.
 
To date, three neo-Nazi groups have been banned in Britain — National Action, Sonnenkrieg Division and Feuerkrieg Division. If parliamentary approval is given to the Home Secretary’s move, it will become a terror offence to be a member of AWD or to invite support for it.
 
Among those said to have been influenced by AWD in Britain was the youngest person convicted of planning a terror attack in Britain, who police found to have been searching for synagogue targets around the UK, and a boy jailed last year for preparing acts of terrorism.