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LONDON — An officer in London’s main police force was convicted on Thursday of being a member of a banned neo-Nazi group, his force said, becoming the first British police officer to be convicted of a terrorism offense, according to the BBC and other British news sources.
Benjamin Hannam, 22, a probationary police officer who applied to the London force, the Metropolitan Police, in 2017 and joined it in early 2018, was found guilty of membership of a banned organization — the neo-Nazi group National Action — as well as two counts of fraud by false representation and two counts of possession of document likely to be of use to a terrorist, the police said in a briefing.
The fraud charges related to lying on application forms for his police position, local media at a court in London reported.
Mr. Hannam demonstrated an “adherence to fascist ideology and a potentially veiled but nonetheless evident neo-Nazi mind-set,” the prosecutor, Dan Pawson-Pounds, said according to The Independent, adding that he had met with people at National Action events even after the group had been banned. The group, which praised the murder of a British lawmaker, Jo Cox, was outlawed in December 2016.
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