A neo-Nazi group has been outlawed as a terrorist organisation in the UK by Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD) is the second extreme right-wing group to be banned, after National Action in 2016. Membership of the group is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Two teenage members of SKD, Michal Szewczuk, 19, and Oskar Dunn-Koczorowski, 18, were jailed for terrorism offences in June last year after the BBC found them to be encouraging an attack on Prince Harry, who they claimed was a race traitor for marrying Meghan Markle, in secret chat rooms.
The orders come less than a week after nine people were murdered in the German city of Hanau in a racially-motivated attack by a far-right extremist against people with immigrant backgrounds.
Ms Patel said: “Recent attacks here and in Germany have highlighted the threat we continue to face from violent extremism.
“We are working to keep the public safe by increasing funding for counter-terror police and strengthening the law to keep terrorists locked up for longer.
“By proscribing these groups, we are making it much harder for them to spread their hateful rhetoric.”
The decision followed a meeting of the Proscription Review Group, which brings together representatives from the police and other partners, to assess the risk posed by groups which may be considered for proscription.
According to Hope not Hate, SKD is a Nazi Satanist group that emerged from a split with System Resistance Network (itself an offshoot of National Action), and which is “possibly the most extreme Nazi group we have seen in decades”.
It added in a 2019 report that “a large selection of SKD’s outpourings encourage rape, paedophilia and murder. Sodomy was also a disturbing and repetitive theme.
“Hope not Hate understands that some members have also carried out some of these satanic fantasies and allegations of rape and imprisonment against their own members are circulating.”
Stephen Doughty MP, a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, told the Guardian: “This is a very welcome but hugely overdue decision.
“I and others – including journalists and organisations like Hope Not Hate – have repeatedly urged tough action on these sick, twisted neo-Nazi organisations for the last few years.
“Yet despite repeatedly meeting ministers and officials in private and raising concerns in public it has taken until now for them to be banned.
“The government need to wake up to the threat posed by these extreme right organisations – who would seek to target communities from Muslims to Jews, the LGBT community and anyone who doesn’t meet their white supremacist criteria.”
When Szewczuk and Koczorowski were prosecuted last year, prosecutor Naomi Parsons said that posts made by the two individuals “convey a message of the threat of and/or use of serious violence against others” including Jewish people, non-white people and anyone “perceived to be complicit in the perpetuation of multiculturalism”.
