Couple who named baby after Hitler convicted of neo-Nazi terror group charges
A neo-Nazi couple who named their baby after Adolf Hitler have been convicted of being part of a terrorist group.
Adam Thomas, 22, and Claudia Patatas, 38, were found guilty of being members of the extreme right-wing organisation National Action, which was banned in 2016.
The jury at Birmingham Crown Court was told the couple, from Waltham Gardens, Banbury, Oxfordshire, had given their child the middle name “Adolf”, which self-confessed racist Thomas said in evidence was in “admiration” of Hitler.
Photographs recovered from their home showed Thomas cradling his newborn son while wearing the hooded white robes of a Ku Klux Klansman.
A third defendant – a leading member in National Action’s Midlands’ chapter, warehouse worker Daniel Bogunovic, 27, of Crown Hills Rise, Leicester – was also convicted of being a National Action member.
Former Amazon security guard Thomas and Patatas, a photographer originally from Portugal, were found guilty after a seven-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court.
Jurors were told Bogunovic already had a conviction from earlier this year for stirring up racial hatred after being part of a group that plastered Aston University, in Birmingham, with the group’s offensive stickers.
Thomas, a twice-failed Army applicant, was also convicted of having a terrorist manual, namely the Anarchist’s Cookbook, which contained instructions on making “viable” bombs.
The Crown’s case was that after being banned by the government in December 2016, National Action simply “shed one skin for another” and “rebranded”.
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Jurors heard evidence of social media chats involving Thomas, Patatas and Bogunovic, discussing what prosecutors have alleged was the banned group’s continuing operation, under a different name.
The jury also heard that Thomas and Patatas plastered National Action stickers in public locations after the ban, while Bogunovic was calling for a “leadership” meeting in a chat group for senior members in April 2017.
Three other men who had been due to stand trial alongside the trio, admitted being National Action members before the trial began.
Thomas’s close friend Darren Fletcher, 28, of Kitchen Lane, Wednesfield, West Midlands, Joel Wilmore, 24, of Bramhall Road, Stockport, Greater Manchester, and Nathan Pryke, 26, of Dartford Road, March, Cambridgeshire, will be sentenced later.
Thomas and Patatas also kept weapons such as crossbows, machetes and axes at their home, which was decorated with Nazi memorabilia.
The court heard they joined National Action after being “fuelled by hatred and division” and engaged in a “terror born out of a fanatical and tribal belief in white supremacy”.
The group was banned by the government after members celebrated the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by far-right terrorist Thomas Mair in 2016.
The court heard transcripts of encrypted Telegram chat messages following the ban proving all three defendants were still members of the group post-proscription.
Portuguese Patatas, a wedding photographer, used the chat platform to message another “vehement Nazi” Darren Fletcher, 28, saying “all Jews must be put to death”.
Patatas, who has a black sun SS symbol tattooed on her back, also revealed she once celebrated Hitler’s birthday by eating a cake with a “Fuhrer face” decorated on it.
She wrote: “I did struggle to slice his face. Adolf is life.”
Meanwhile, Thomas said: “We could slaughter billions of non-whites no problem, we are superior. Personally all I want is a white homeland. I don’t accept anyone who isn’t 100 per cent white.”
The messages from the chat group ‘TripleK Mafia’ were found by police on a mobile phone seized from National Action Midlands leader Alex Deakin, 23, from Birmingham.
Thomas, Patatas and Bogunovic will be sentenced on December 14.
