A neo-Nazi who performed a Hitler salute in the Buchenwald execution chambers was a “terrorist hiding in plain sight”, a court has heard.

Alex Davies, 27, is on trial accused of being a member of the proscribed organisation National Action (NA) after it was banned in December 2016.

Davies told an undercover reporter that he did not want to say what he wanted to do to Jews “because it was so extreme”, said Barnaby Jameson QC, prosecuting.

He added that Davies “went on tour to Germany to Buchenwald to give the Nazi salute in the execution chamber that was a flagrant and provocative breach of German law”.

He said that NA was judged by an expert to be “so extreme you can’t go any further”.

Mr Jameson QC told the trial at Winchester Crown Court that the UK government banned the group after it had “terrorised” towns across the country with its call for an “all-out race war”.

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On trial: NA founder Davies arrives at Winchester Crown Court (Photo: Andrew Matthews)

Following the ban, Davies set up NS131, which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action and which itself was later banned by the government, Mr Jameson said.

He said: “National Action never disbanded, it morphs into regional factions.

“To a terrorist hiding in plain sight, which is what Mr Davies is, bans mean nothing.”

He continued: “The group was expanding and recruiting, what became NS131 was one of the skins worn by continuity factions of National Action.”

He added: “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.”

Davies has told the court that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes.

He said that he was “exercising his democratic rights” after the ban and he was involved in “advancing the cause of national socialism not the cause of a continuity NA.

“After proscription all I am interested in is pursuing legal political activities.”

Davies, from Swansea, denies membership of a proscribed organisation between December 17 2016 and September 27 2017, and the trial continues.