Russian Neo-Nazi Murder Squads Kill 71 In 2009

Russia's battle against the country's neo-Nazis is reaching boiling point as it emerged they killed 71 people last year. One group recently posted a sickening video message on the internet celebrating a stabbing attack which killed a Ghanaian man in December. Yet members of the country's most prominent ultra-nationalist group deny their tactics are violent.

The Slavic Union spoke to Sky News during their bi-monthly "training" in remote woods just outside Moscow. Dressed in winter camouflage they greet each other with macho hugs as they gather round a campfire and help each other attach red arm bands emblazoned with their adapted swastika.

Rifles and semi-automatic weapons are assembled and they are ready to start flexing their muscles.
These neo-Nazis see themselves as hero warriors fighting for the rights of Russians in Russia.

They begin "practice" fighting with knives and firing at trees - all part of the "non-violent" approach.

Up to 20 of their members are in jail for racially motivated murder and attacks - senseless murder of those whose crime may simply have been not looking Russian enough. Sasha Zorg's upper body is covered in tattoos, one of which is a swastika. He has been in prison twice for shooting two migrant workers.

"I call it my struggle," he tells me. "I'll continue."

The group spend as much time photographing each other with guns as they do training. The man at the centre of many of the poses is the Slavic Union's leader Dmitry Dyomushkin. He's keen to cultivate an image of himself as the respectable face of a Far Right which he sees as a legitimate challenge to the current government.

"Sixty per cent of Russians support our goals," he said.

"But even with this majority we are not allowed to be part of the political process because the government has squeezed out opposition.

"The whole new generation of Russians are nationalists - our influence on young people is very strong."

His quest for a publicly acceptable image is not helped when his followers do a group Nazi salute, hailing the regime which 25 million Russians gave their lives to end.

The chilling face of extremism was revealed when another neo-nazi group calling themselves "the warriors of the white revolution" unveiled their video message of the attack on Ghanaian Solomon Attengo Gwa-jio in St Petersburg. They described the footage as "a new year gift" as they pledged further acts of terror. No one has been arrested for the December attack, during which the victim was stabbed 20 times. It sadly echoes so many other incidents of random racist brutality.

Most are committed by young Russians who seem to inhabit a world of violence where patriotism and nationalism have become - too often fatally - confused.

Moscow-based human rights group SOVA said authorities are finally tackling the problem, though not for the right reasons.

"I think mostly it's not because of the murders themselves but because the potential of riots based on this ethnic hatred," SOVA director Alexander Verkhovsky told Sky News.

He says the situation is reaching boiling point, forcing the authorities to act.

"The authorities would hate to lose control over some district or city," Mr Verkhovsky said.

"And so they try to suppress any activity including violent activity which may turn to such riots."

heres the sky video of the item

thanks to West Midlands Unity for finding this item
origin      Sky News

Gordon Brown and David Cameron advised not to join forces against the BNP

An article appeared in the London Standard today revealing that David Cameron and Gordon Brown have discussed an unprecedented 'pact'to keep BNP leader Nick Giffin from winning the seat in Barking during the general election.

The deal didn't go ahead after Searchlight advised against giving Griffin 'victim status'.

So, both party leaders clearly recognise there is a problem in the area. They wouldn't dream of agreeing to this deal to keep a Green Party, UKIP, Liberal or any other party member from gaining one seat. This implies they realise what a huge PR victory it would be for the BNP, and what an appalling message it would send to our multi-cultural society to give a member of this odious party even the smallest sniff of political credibility and power.

But what are they doing to combat British people's fears and prejudices? Most of us know we are not being over run by Muslims extremists, and we know the problems with the UK economy are nothing to do with immigration.

But what is the government doing to address these fears and reassure the people who are turning to a dangerous, fascist party? As the BNP thugs have not yet been marginalised to appeal to the most die-hard of racists - clearly they are not doing enough.

Poland seeks Swede over Auschwitz sign theft (Poland)

A Polish court has issued a European arrest warrant for a Swede alleged to be behind the theft of the Arbeit Macht Frei sign from Auschwitz.
A court official in the southern city of Krakow said the warrant had been issued for Anders Hogstrom.

The metal sign was stolen in December from above the entrance to the notorious Nazi death camp. It was later recovered, cut into three pieces.

Five Polish men have already been arrested over the theft.

The European arrest warrant obliges any of the 27 EU member states to arrest Mr Hogstrom if he is found and hand him over to Polish police.

The sign, which weighs 40kg (90lb), was half-unscrewed, half-torn from above the death camp's gate.

The 5m (16ft) wrought iron sign - the words on which translate as "Work sets you free" - symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

The theft caused outrage in Israel, Poland and around the world. More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in occupied Poland during World War II.

Anders Högström

The one-time leader of a Swedish neo-Nazi group has claimed that he organized the theft of a sign from the gates of former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on behalf of an as-yet unnamed collector.

Anders Högström -- who founded Sweden's virulently anti-immigrant National Socialist Front in 1994 -- told local media that he was hired to collect the sign from the Polish gang that carried out the theft and pass it to a buyer. "I was asked if I wanted to take the sign from one location to another," he said during an interview with the daily Aftonbladet. "We had a person who was willing to pay several millions [of kronor, or hundreds of thousands of dollars] for the sign."

But after discovering that the money from the sale would fund a violent campaign aimed at disrupting Sweden's upcoming parliamentary election, Högström said he decided to inform police about the plot. "That was not something I wanted to be involved in or carry out in any way," said Högström, who quit the far-right movement in 1999

Sweden's security service has confirmed that it is investigating reports of a neo-Nazi plot to bomb the country's parliament and the home of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. It has not confirmed whether this investigation is connected to the Auschwitz robbery.

Sources

BBC News
AOL News

Former SS assassin accused of additional war crimes (Netherlands)

Heinrich Boere, a former member of the Nazi SS, is currently on trial for shooting three innocent civilians in the Netherlands during the German occupation. New evidence suggests he may have been involved in seven additional deaths.

Former SS man Heinrich Boere has never denied the charges against him. As part of a Nazi hit squad in the Netherlands, Boere, now 88 years old, stands accused of having shot and killed three innocent civilians in 1944 in the Netherlands. The "Germanic SS in the Netherlands," as Boere's group was known, was charged with combating anti-Nazi resistance in the country.

"We didn't know the men. The Security Service of the SS gave us the names and we got going," Boere told Spiegel Online in 2007. "They told us they were partisans, terrorists. We thought we were doing the right thing."

Now, though, German historian Stephan Stracke has found evidence Boere may have been involved in more SS missions in the Netherlands than previously known. He claims to have found evidence in Dutch archives that Boere operated as a spy to expose resistance attempts to hide those who were being hunted by the Nazis. On Thursday, co-plaintiffs in the case, currently being tried in Aachen, filed a motion to present new evidence and to levy further charges against Boere.

According to Stracke's research, Boere operated as an SS spy in 1944 and managed to penetrate a Dutch group aiding those trying to escape Nazi persecution. Boere, along with two other SS men, claimed to be victims of Nazi oppression and said they needed a safe house. Two farmers were found to put them up.

Initiative and guilt
The trio informed their SS commander of the resistance cell, providing names of the people involved, their location and information about the structure of the Dutch resistance, the complaint alleges. Boere and his two SS comrades each received 75 guilders for their efforts - equal to roughly 400 euros today.

Not long after the SS trio's undercover operation, the SS staged large-scale raids and arrested 52 people - at least seven of whom subsequently died in concentration camps "due to their inhuman treatment," the lawyers for the co-plaintiffs write in their complaint. The lawyers say that Boere willingly played a role in their deaths.

Detlef Hartmann and Wolfgang Heiermann, lawyers for the co-plaintiffs - representing the families of two of those Boere shot dead in 1944 - say that the new evidence disproves Boere's claim to merely have been following orders. It provides proof of Boere's initiative and thus his guilt as a perpetrator of Nazi war crimes, the lawyers say.

It is unclear what effect the new research may have on the progression of the trial, public prosecutor Andreas Brendel said on Thursday. He did say, however, that it would likely not change Boere's sentence should he be found guilty - he is seen as being too old to send to prison.

Boere's defense attorney, Gordon Christiansen, declined to respond to questions, saying only that he needed more time to study the new evidence.

Volunteer killing squad

Boere was born in 1921 in Aachen on Germany's border with Belgium and the Netherlands. According to the charges levied against him, Boere killed 22-year-old pharmacist Fritz Bicknese on July 14, 1944 and bike-shop owner Teun de Groot on September 3. He also is charged with having murdered a man named Frans-Willem Kusters.

The son of a Dutch father and a German mother, Boere said in 2007 that he had been a "fanatic" member of the SS. As an 18 year old, he volunteered for the SS in 1940 and fought for two years on the Eastern front. In 1942, he returned to occupied the Netherlands where he was assigned to a small SS unit comprised of 15 men.

The unit, called "Feldmeijer", was charged with breaking any signs of resistance in the Netherlands via arbitrary shootings of civilians seen as being anti-German. Whenever there were attacks on German troops or people who collaborated with them, senior SS and police commander Hanns Albin Rauter dispatched his killing squad by issuing the codeword "Silbertanne". At least 54 Dutch citizens are believed to have been murdered by these SS hitmen.
Boere admitted to having committed three of the killings during interrogations as early as 1946. Only recently, Boere repeated his admission to the killings before the Aachen court, once again claiming that he had been under orders.

Afraid of disobeying
The only living witness to one of the shootings, Jacobus Peter Bestemann, gave testimony to the court via a video feed. Bestemann, now 88 and living in Rotterdam, said that members of the SS were afraid of disobeying orders. "That was dangerous," Bestemann said.
In his confession, Boere claimed that Bestemann, too, had fired shots - an allegation Bestemann has denied. He said he only accompanied his comrades and that he never carried a weapon. "Someone must have ordered me to go along," he said. He also says that he doesn't know if Boere fired shots or not. Despite his denials, Bestemann served 13 years in prison in Holland for the murders of two mayors.
Boere has also been convicted of his crimes once before. In October 1949, an Amsterdam court sentenced him for the murders. But by then, Boere was back in Germany and he was never extradited.
Origianl post
NRC

Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal slams Ukraine award to nationalist

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko once commanded such respect that hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Kiev when he lost a fraudulent election.

But the former hero of the Orange Revolution could hardly have sunk any lower. In his bid for re-election this month, he drew just 5 percent of the vote. And now his posthumous honor for a nationalist leader - who was also, according to some, a Nazi collaborator - has led many to say Yushchenko has disgraced himself in his last weeks in office.

On Friday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights group, denounced the Hero of Ukraine award Yushchenko bestowed on Stepan Bandera last week. Bandera was a leader of Ukraine's nationalist movement, which included an insurgent army that sided with Nazi Germany during part of World War II.

The Wiesenthal Center said Bandera's followers were linked to the deaths of thousands of Jews. It also noted that the award came shortly before International Holocaust Memorial Day, which was observed Wednesday.

"It is surely a travesty when such an honor is granted right at the period when the world pauses to remember the victims of the Holocaust on Jan. 27," Mark Weitzman, the Wiesenthal Center's director of government affairs, wrote in a letter to Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States.

The award drew sharp criticism from Russia, as well, where Bandera is viewed as a traitor for fighting against Soviet troops in World War II. Russia's Foreign Ministry called the decision "odious."

In Moscow, the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi said more than 50 of its activists picketed the Ukrainian embassy Friday.

"We have sent him things that he will be need when has retired: a hot water bottle, an enema, valerian, history books, photos of Stepan Bandera and videos featuring recollections from World War II veterans," the group said on its Web site. Valerian is an herb used as a sedative.

Bandera was assassinated by the KGB in 1959 in Munich.
Yushchenko was unrepentant Friday, decreeing further that the groups affiliated with Bandera be recognized as "fighters for Ukrainian independence."
Yushchenko made establishing strong Ukrainian identity, and pulling away from Russia's influence, a focus of his five years in office - at the expense, some say, of addressing corruption and economic problems.
It has been a long fall for a man once revered at home and abroad. After his supporters protested the vote he lost in 2004, Yushchenko won the presidency in a court-ordered rerun. He drew strong support from the West, which saw him as progressive and democratic.
But he squandered his political capital on infighting and he leaves office to an awkward silence from the West and cold denunciations from Moscow.
And, for some Jewish leaders in Ukraine, the award to Bandera was the last straw.
"Six generations of my ancestors lived in Ukraine, and Yushchenko simply crossed out the memory of them," said David Milman, assistant to the chief Rabbi of Ukraine. "This decision has turned many people away from Yushchenko, while earlier we were loyal to him."
Washington Post

Kirov Court Orders Closure of Far-Right Web Site (Russia)

In a rare application of anti-extremism legislation, a district court in Kirov, Russia ordered the closure of a far-right web site, according to a January 27, 2010 article in the Nizhny Novgorod edition of the national

daily "Kommersant." The Leninsky District court handed down its verdict in approval of the local prosecutor's office, which moved to close the web site of the local branch of the Movement Against Illegal

Immigration (DPNI)--Russia's largest far-right group.

The prosecutor's office sent its motion to the court after reviewing a video clip on the organization's site entitled "Day of the Migrant." The prosecutor argued that this video clip called for "violent action

against ethnic and social groups--Vietnamese, Armenians, Azeris, Gypsies, and homeless people." The prosecutor also asked that the clip be placed on the federal list of banned extremist publications.

The Moscow leadership of the DPNI reacted by characterizing itself as an "opposition movement" being unfairly targeted by "corrupt" officials. The DPNI has in the past been linked with anti-migrant riots and other

acts of violence, but unlike most neo-Nazi groups, it is operates legally and often participates in officially approved marches and demonstrations, implying a certain level of official approval and respectability.

ANGER AS POPE SLAMS UK EQUALITY LAW

Pope Benedict XVI has sparked fury among secular and gay rights campaigners after he attacked equality legislation in Britain for running contrary to "natural law" and restricting the freedom of religious communities.
The Pontiff said the effects of some legislation designed to give equality of opportunity had been to impose "unjust limitations" on the freedom of religious communities to act "in accordance with their beliefs".
"Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society," he told the Catholic bishops of England and Wales gathered in Rome.

"Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

His remarks have been interpreted as an attack on the Sexual Orientation Regulations which forced Catholic adoption agencies to consider gay couples as potential adoptive parents.

By the time the regulations came into force in January last year, five of the agencies in England and Wales had cut ties with their Roman Catholic dioceses in order to comply with the new laws.

The Government also suffered defeats in the House of Lords last week after the churches voiced concerns that the provisions of the flagship Equality Bill could expose them to legal challenges if they refused to employ sexually active gay people and transsexuals.

The Pope's remarks were made in an address in which he gave the first official confirmation that he will make his first apostolic visit to Britain later this year. No dates or itinerary were given, but the Pope, who will be 83 when he visits, spoke of the "living faith and devotion" among Catholics in England and Wales, highlighting the recent visit of the relics of St Therese and the forthcoming beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

The National Secular Society (NSS) said it would mount a protest campaign against the visit made up of gay groups, victims of clerical abuse, feminists, family planning organisations and pro-abortion groups among others.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: "The Pope's criticism that British equality legislation 'violates the natural law' is a coded attack on the legal rights granted to women and gay people. His ill-informed claim that our equality laws undermine religious freedom suggests that he supports the right of churches to discriminate in accordance with their religious ethos."

The Express

UK's OLD SOLDIERS IN CLASH WITH BNP

OLD soldiers have clashed with right-wing extremists after the British National Party used underhand tactics to book a Royal British Legion Club for a rally.
Following a public outcry Conservative MP Andrew Selous, who served in the Territorial Army for 12 years, led a campaign to get the meeting scrapped.
He said ex servicemen who fought against fascism in the Second World War were horrified their premises were to be used by the BNP, particularly when the date clashed with Holocaust Memorial Day.
Now the BNP has hit out at the South Bedfordshire MP accusing him of “acting like a fascist” claiming: “Many of our members are ex servicemen and the British Legion should be more patriotic and less political.”
The BNP says it regularly holds meetings on council and Legion premises.
Deputy chairman and spokesman Simon Darby told The Sunday Express on Friday that a political meeting was held at a Legion club in the north-west but refused to say where.
Mr Selous has written to Legion chairman Peter Cleminson asking him to issue guidance to clubs.
Members of the Leighton Buzzard club say their secretary Eileen Johnson was hoodwinked by BNP activist Shelley Rose into booking the meeting under the name British Heritage. It wasn’t until Mr Selous, a club member, discovered their real identity that he asked them to cancel.Mrs Johnson said: “As soon as I heard, we cancelled them. We don’t want those sort of people here. Our members wouldn’t be at all happy.”
Mr Selous said: “I think it is revealing that the BNP did not book the meeting in their own name. They are not prepared to be honest and upfront about who they are.”
The Express