Former Miss Hitler Beauty Pageant Entrant Jailed For Being Part of Neo-Nazi Terrorist Group
A former Miss Hitler beauty pageant contestant and three other members of a banned neo-Nazi terrorist group in the U.K have been jailed.
Alice Cutter, 24, and her partner Mark Jones, 25, were convicted of being members of National Action after a trial in March alongside Garry Jack and Connor Scothern. The group was banned in 2016 and branded "racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic" by then U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Cutter and Jones met after she entered a Miss Hitler beauty contest as "Buchenwald Princess"—a reference to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany where Jews were murdered, West Midlands Police said.
On Tuesday, Cutter and Jones, both of Sowerby Bridge near Halifax, West Yorkshire, were sentenced on Tuesday to three years and five-and-a-half years respectively, police said.
Jack, 24, from Birmingham, was jailed for four and a half years while 19-year-old Scothern, from Nottingham, was handed an 18-month jail term. All four were told they would have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentence before they can apply for parole.
Prosecutors and police said Cutter, Jones, Jack and Scothern had remained "active" members of the group even after its ban in December 2016.
She had denied ever being a member of National Action, despite attending the group's rallies where banners reading "Hitler was right" were waved, the PA news agency reported. The jury was also shown messages in which Cutter joked about gassing synagogues and using a Jewish person's head as a football.
Jones admitted that he had posed for a photograph while delivering a Nazi-style salute and holding a National Action flag in the execution room of Buchenwald during a 2016 trip to Germany, according to PA.
West Midlands Police said Cutter and the men continued to "communicate covertly using encrypted messaging platforms" after the ban.
"They held secret meetings to discuss their ambitions for a race war whilst recruiting other young people to the group, sharing intensely shocking images mocking the Holocaust and glorifying Hitler," police said.
During sentencing at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Paul Farrer told Jones he had played "a significant role in the continuation of the organization" after it was banned in December 2016.
He told Cutter that while she didn't hold an organizational or leadership role, she was a "trusted confidante" of one the group's leaders and in a "committed relationship" with Jones.
Following the sentencing, Detective Chief Superintendent Kenny Bell, the head of West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, said: "We have seen a significant increase of right-wing referrals to our Prevent programme and we will investigate the threat as robustly as we would any other terrorist group, as well as training our officers on the signs to look out for and working with communities to increase awareness.
"Terrorists and extremists use this kind of ideology to create discord, distrust and fear among our communities and we strive to counter this. I would encourage people to report hate crime to us and it will be taken seriously."
