Image: Jyrki Lyytikkä / Yle

Finland's National Police Board has filed suit against the ultra-nationalist Nordic Resistance Movement's Finnish chapter. The police board says it has appealed to the Pirkanmaa District Court for the shut-down of the neo-Nazi organisation.

"We consider the Nordic Resistance Movement's activities to be intrinsically unlawful and contrary to accepted principles. We consider this to be grounds for proposing the dissolution of the group," Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen said back in December.

The Nordic Resistance Movement is a multinational conglomeration whose agenda includes the creation of a national socialist state spanning the Nordic countries. The neo-Nazi group is openly racist, police say.

"There is no place for violent and openly racist groups in Finnish society," Kolehmainen said last December.

One of the founders of the Finnish branch of the Nordic Resistance Movement, Jesse Torniainen, was sentenced to two years in prison for aggravated assault in December, following a sequence of events at Helsinki Central Railway Station that lead to a man's death. That case is moving on to the Court of Appeal at the prosecutor's request.