Italian police bust armed neo-Nazi group after nationwide sweeps

Police seize automatic weapons, rifles, crossbows, swords, knives, Nazi flags and books on Hitler and Mussolini

By AFP 28 November 2019, 10:20 pm

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Italian soccer fans hold black flags effigying late dictator Benito Mussolini, during an Italian major league soccer match in Rome in 2006. (AP Photo/Plinio Lepri)

Italian police cracked open an armed neo-Nazi group Thursday which they said had been forging contacts with extremists elsewhere in Europe.

Officers searching the homes of 19 suspects throughout the country, from Milan to Sicily, seized automatic weapons, rifles, crossbows, swords, knives, Nazi flags and books on dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, police said.

Those targeted belonged to the fledgling National Italian Socialist Workers’ Party, which has an openly anti-Semitic and xenophobic program and was in contact with Britain’s Neo-Nazi Combat 18 and Portugal’s far-right New Social Order.

The group used a closed chat called “Militia” dedicated to training the militants.

The head trainer was a member of the powerful Calabrian mafia ‘Ndrangheta, who had collaborated with police on previous investigations and was a local leader in Liguria of the small, far-right Forza Nuova party, police said.