Neo-Nazi ‘clan’ busted for inciting hatred and racial violence on Spain’s Costa Almeria

FAR-RIGHT: The group promoted hate and intolerance against the Muslim community CREDIT: Guardia Civil Almeria

GUARDIA CIVIL have arrested nine members of a Costa Almeria Neo-Nazi gang for inciting hate and racial violence.

The Guardia said the 18 to 28-year-olds detained in Antas and Garrucha were all members of the so-called ‘Antas Klan,’ a violent, far-right youth group.

In the Guardia’s words, the organisation “set up clandestine patrols, which roved round at night, filling the streets with flyers with messages of hate and violence against the Muslim community.”

The Guardia operation also resulted in the dismantling of a drug sales set-up in Antas. The gang members used the proceeds from the illegal sales to fund their activities.

The nine now face charges for inciting hate and violence against a minority “for racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic” reasons, membership of a criminal group, unlawful association and drug trafficking.

Raids on properties led to the seizure of a knife, knuckle dusters and nearly 500 radical content flyers and posters, as well as marihuana and other drugs.

Five years ago the Guardia made six arrests in Antas, two of the detainees minors, for daubing Neo-Nazi symbols on public property and for verbal and physical attacks against the Islamic community. The arrests pointed to the existence of a locally-based extreme group which the Guardia said was “directly related with a series of violent actions against a minority which could alter co-existence and public safety in said municipality.”

Last July flyers bearing the name of the Antas Klan appeared in the municipality. They referred to what they claimed was the “insecurity” in the area and promoted hate and intolerance against the Muslim community.

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Written by

Cathy Elelman

Cathy Elelman is the local writer for the Costa de Almeria edition of the Euro Weekly News.

Based in Mojacar for the last 21 years, Cathy is very much part of the local community and is always well and truly up on all the latest news and events going on in this region of Spain.

Her top goals are to do the best job she can informing the local English-speaking community, visitors to the area and the wider world about about the news in Almeria, to learn something new every day, and to embrace very new challenge this fast-changing world brings her way.

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