Six people including a couple have been jailed today for being members of National Action, a proscribed group that glorifies Hitler and the Third Reich.

Adam Thomas with a machete

The group was banned by the Home Office in December 2016.

Adam Thomas, 22, and Claudia Patatas, 38, from Banbury were found guilty along with Daniel Bogunovic, 27, on 12 November following a four week trial at Birmingham Crown Court. Thomas was also found guilty of having a terrorist manual on his laptop that gave advice on homemade explosives including a “soft drink can bomb”.

Three others pleaded guilty to being members of the banned organisation before the trial began on 8 October. Darren Fletcher, 29, Nathan Pryke, 27, and Joel Wilmore, 24, admitted the offence under the Terrorism Act. Wilmore also pleaded guilty to possessing a terrorist manual about how to make Molotov cocktails.

They were all sentenced on 18 December:

Adam Thomas - Total of six years and six months.

Claudia Patatas - Five years.

Daniel Bogunovic - Six years and four months.

Darren Fletcher - Total of five years which incudes 20 months for breaching a Criminal Anti-Social Behaviour Order (CrASBO).

Nathan Pryke - Five years and five months.

Joel Wilmore - Total of five years and 10 months.

When Thomas, Patatas and Bogunovic were convicted Deb Walsh from the CPS said: “After National Action was banned it went underground and changed its name but it did not disappear.

“These members continued to believe in its racist neo-Nazi worldview, remained in contact on encrypted messaging apps, and organised meetings to keep the group going.

“But they left a vast trail of incriminating evidence which led to three of them pleading guilty and the others being convicted by a jury.”

The prosecution’s case was built around texts and images they shared on messaging apps before the ban in December 2016 and until September 2017. This demonstrated that even after National Action was proscribed they continued to operate as devoted members of the organisation but gave it different titles including “Triple K Mafia” – a reference to the Ku Klux Klan in the US.

The messages praised the Nazis, Hitler, the “final solution” and images included that of men dressed in paramilitary style clothes holding up or surrounded by National Action banners. They also arranged meetings including one in a pub in Sutton Coldfield in April 2017 attended by Pryke, Bogunovic, Fletcher, and Patatas.

Images were also found on Patatas’s laptop of Adam Thomas in Ku Klux Klan robes holding a machete taken at their home in Banbury. She also had a photo on her mobile of Thomas, Fletcher and others giving a Nazi salute under a crucifix outside Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. When Bogunovic’s house in Leicester was searched the police found a Nazi flag in his bedroom along with a large number of National Action stickers. He also had a National Action strategy manual on a memory stick.