London Police Officer Guilty of Belonging to Neo-Nazi Terror Group

A Metropolitan Police officer has been convicted of belonging to a banned neo-Nazi terrorist organisation.

Benjamin Hannam, 22, is the first UK police officer to be convicted of involvement in far-right terrorism.

Hannam, from north London, was found guilty of being a member of National Action, a right-wing extremist group that was banned and proscribed as a terror organisation by the UK government in December 2016.

Hannam had been a member of the group since March of that year, and remained a member of the group when he passed vetting checks and joined the Metropolitan Police in March 2018. 

He worked as a probationary officer with the force for almost two years before he was arrested, when he was found on a leaked database of users from an extreme right-wing forum.

Detectives would find images of Hannam in a police uniform with a Adolf Hitler-style moustache imposed on his face, as well as a manual on how to use a knife to injure or kill, and a document written by convicted right-wing terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.

“Benjamin Hannam would not have got a job as a probationary police constable if he’d told the truth about his membership of a banned far-right group,” said Jenny Hopkins, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said. 

“His lies have caught up with him and he’s been exposed as an individual with deeply racists beliefs who also possessed extremist publications of use to a terrorist."

As well as the terror conviction, a jury at the Old Bailey in London found Hannam guilty of possessing documents useful for terrorism and for fraud. He also admitted possessing a prohibited image of a child. He will be sentenced later this month.