In the early 2000’s Searchlight publisher Gerry Gable was heavily involved in dealing with the problems of fascist activity in prisons. The article reproduced here, written by him in January 2006, typified the work that led him to engage with the prison service during this period to help bring about change.

Nazi prisoner’s death plot exposes security failure

A violent neo-nazi sentenced to an indefinite jail term for trying to shoot a man has been allowed to orchestrate a terror campaign from within prison to have his victim “beaten to a pulp”.

Three days after he was jailed, Shaun Thomas sent a letter from his cell in Marshgate prison and young offenders’ institution, Doncaster, urging his far-right colleagues to take action against the man he had failed to kill, telling them where to find him and how to ensure that he ended up killed or maimed.

Security gaps

The Home Office has admitted that most prisoners’ letters are not monitored and there were no checks in place to stop Thomas’s letter, or others like it, from being sent out freely. This is a massive gap in security at a time when the number of racist and nazi killers in prison is growing and they are becoming more organised.

Islamist extremists too have benefited from the liberalisation of prison regulations and a fear by the Prison Service of being accused of prejudice in the way they handle Muslim prisoners.

Searchlight knows of young Muslim gangsters serving life sentences for killings arising from turf wars over drugs and prostitution, who use their faith to take control of their fellow prisoners without any interference from prison staff.

The breach at Doncaster

Premier Prison Services, which runs Doncaster prison on behalf of the Home Office, has launched an investigation into the Thomas case security breach. Thomas’s victim, who only discovered the threat against him after being contacted by a journalist – the police did not inform him – said:

“I am utterly shocked and horrified to hear about this letter. Shaun Thomas is deeply disturbed and has had a vendetta against me for no apparent reason but I had no idea at all that he was still trying to get me killed even from inside prison.”

Thomas, 36, who is from Rotherham in South Yorkshire, ambushed his victim outside a pub after stalking him for months, bombarding him with text messages and prompting him to change his telephone number. “He shot at me twice but luckily for me he missed and I was able to run off,” said his victim, who asked not to be named.

Thomas pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and was sentenced on 19 August at Sheffield Crown Court. He was jailed for an indefinite period after the court deemed him to be a significant risk to the public and likely to reoffend. He was given a tariff of 35 months which he must serve, but he is likely to remain in prison for longer.

Orchestrating hate

Yet three days later on 22 August, Thomas was allowed to write a letter on prison notepaper addressed to a far-right sympathiser. Once received, it was widely disseminated within far-right circles. He was just the kind of extremist, unbalanced thug the nazis of the Nationalist Alliance and White People’s Party were looking for to kick off their new venture, White Nationalist Prisoners Aid, an attempt to ape similar groups in the USA such as the Aryan Brotherhood.

In the letter, which is plastered with neo-nazi symbols including the number 88, signifying “Heil Hitler” (H is the eighth letter of the alphabet), Thomas says “the only regret I have is that I missed the bastard”.

He suggests that his friends target his victim, who has never been charged with any sex offences, by making him the “star of an anti-paedophile campaign by using his photo on leaflets/stickers”.

He then lists the exact name and address of his victim’s workplace and a pub he frequents and suggests that someone captures him on a mobile phone camera.

This, he says, could get the man investigated by the police and “also could get him beaten to a pulp by people who have seen the leaflet so nothing can come back on us”.

Far-right tactics

Falsely accusing people of sex offences against children is a tactic often used by sections of the far right in order to intimidate and harass their enemies, especially through nazi websites such as Redwatch and Noncewatch. As in this case, the people set up as victims are not involved in paedophilia at all. Some may be gay, which is more than enough for these vicious criminals to put an innocent person into the frame. Others are anti-nazi activists or have in some way offended the nazis.

In October, Searchlight published a photograph taken at a Nationalist Alliance barbecue last summer run by some of Thomas’s nazi comrades. The group split soon after the barbecue and documents that have come into circulation as these violent nazis fall out with each other have provided us with the opportunity to alert the authorities and people likely to be targeted by the extreme right.

Disastrous effect

The letter from Thomas also appears to have had a disastrous effect on John “Griff” Wood, who was the Führer of the recently formed British People’s Party until he was unceremoniously ousted in November. In an attempt to justify its existence, White Nationalist Prisoners Aid raised money among its nazi supporters to assist Thomas.

Running true to form, the nazi given the task of getting the money to Thomas appears to have pocketed it, leading to even more threats of violence — this time among the nazi gang itself.

Official response

Since writing his letter from prison, Thomas has encountered problems of his own. On 11 November, he went on hunger strike in protest at being charged with inciting racial tension within the prison.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We do not routinely monitor or censor prisoners’ mail. This is only done if the prisoner has been convicted of an offence such as harassment.” It is understood that prisons were stopped from intercepting all prisoners’ letters after an Appeal Court ruling in 1993 that such practice was repressive to inmates.

A spokesman for Premier said: “The prison will be investigating and if it appears any criminal offences may have been committed the matter will be passed to the police. This individual’s correspondence will also be monitored closely in future.”

Continued organisation

The nazis have recently been passing around the prison details of the gang from the Racial Volunteer Force sentenced at the Old Bailey in November. We hope the Prison Service and the Home Secretary will make sure they are not allowed to organise their own contribution to terrorism from their prison cells.

The nazi websites are currently full of praise for the two racist monsters who killed the black teenager Anthony Walker in Liverpool and are treating them as martyrs for the cause. We still have not had any explanation of how Andy “Nightmare” Frain was able to visit Paul David “Charlie” Sargent, the former leader of Combat 18 who is serving life for the murder of a fellow nazi, within weeks of Frain finishing his prison term for extreme nazi football violence. It is illegal for a person who has recently left prison to visit another prisoner.

This government makes a show of being concerned about the country’s security. It could start by dealing firmly with these nazis and prevent them instigating further serious offences while in custody.