British soldiers arrested for alleged neo-Nazi links

LONDON, March 7 (JTA) — Two British soldiers from elite regiments were among 14 people arrested in Britain’s largest postwar swoop on suspected neo-Nazis involved in acts of criminal racism. In addition to the weekend arrests, simultaneous police raids on dozens of private addresses throughout Britain produced large quantities of weapons, live ammunition, far-right literature and compact disks containing explicitly racist material. The soldiers are believed to have used their military expertise to provide weapons training for neo-Nazis in Britain and terrorists who operate in Northern Ireland. The raids were the result of a yearlong undercover operation in which military and police intelligence agents infiltrated the neo-Nazi Combat 18 movement. Combat 18 takes its name from the first and eighth letters of the alphabet — Adolf Hitler’s initials — and is regarded as a dangerously violent extremist organization with links to international terrorism. Investigators are reported to have identified an additional 10 soldiers with Combat 18 ties, but decided not to act against them because they lack sufficient evidence to prosecute them. The movement is believed to have been actively recruiting soldiers and to have close links to terrorist groups in Northern Ireland. It is also believed to coordinate its activities with hard-line neo-Nazi groups throughout Europe and Scandinavia. According to a security source, the leader of Combat 18, former Royal Marine Will Browning, drew on his military skills when he allegedly launched a letter-bomb campaign against celebrities in interracial marriages two years ago. Former Combat 18 leader Charlie Sargeant, serving a life sentence for murder, once said it would be a mistake to think his organization has a mass following. “We are what we are,” he said. “We’re thugs who follow an ideology.”