Alex Trelinski
SEVEN members of a violent ultra-right group that co-ordinated hate crimes via social media have been arrested by the Policia Nacional.
One of those detained was involved in an attack on an LGTBTQ association building in Alcoy, Alicante Province.
An anonymous complaint about the group’s activities was posted to a ‘tip-off’ section of the Policia Nacional’s website in early 2020.
It mentioned the creation of an online forum that hosted radical and violent far-right messages.
Officers started to monitor postings and discovered extreme hate messages with the intention to instigate violence.
The network posted blogs and messages using different names to hide real identities.
Direct messages were sent to people who had user profiles that matched up to the group’s extremist beliefs, with the aim of indoctrinating them.
On Tuesday, the Policia Nacional arrested four people in Barcelona; two in the Alicante Province towns of Alcoy and Ontinyent; and an individual in the Torrejon de Ardoz area of Madrid.
They’ve been accsued of participating in hate crimes; illegally possessing weapons; insulting State Institutions; and belonging to a criminal group.
Simltaneous home searches uncovered guns and revolvers; fake firearms; ammunition; knives, baseball bats; and material used in the manufacture of explosives.
Supremacist material was also seized including clothing and documents allied to Nazi ideology, in addition to various electronic devices.
READ MORE:
- Ultra right-wing extremists blamed for Molotov attack on Podemos HQ in Spain’s Murcia region
- With racial and homophobic attacks on the rise, new study reveals those most likely to commit hate crimes
- Neonazi gang blamed for spate of violent attacks in Valencia city on Spain’s eastern coast
- New neo-Nazi group identified in Valencia as hate crime spirals throughout Spain
