The officer was only exposed because the info was leaked by an anti-fascist group
Benjamin Hannam, a 22-year-old serving police officer has been convicted of being part of neo-Nazi group National Action. He has also been convicted of fraud for concealing his identity when joining the Metropolitan Police.
However his membership of the group only came to light as a result of anti-fascists leaking data from fascist forum Iron March online. The user, only identified as “antifa-data” posted the personal information online of more than 1,200 users of fascist forums in November 2019.
As police began investigating this data for its links with to far-right organisations, and searching for UK-based members, they discovered that a user called “Anglisc” was linked to Hannam’s address.
The head of the Met Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command, Commander Richard Smith, confirmed this in a press conference.
Smith said: “We identified a forum user called Anglisc. We did some work on that particular account back to 2016 and linked it to Hannam’s address.
“At that point our investigation revealed that he was, by then, a probationary police officer.”
Smith said that it was “difficult to speculate” on whether Hannam would have been caught without the data leak. He went on to say: “Clearly, in this case the Iron March leak triggered the investigation but that’s not to say we wouldn’t have received information from elsewhere and would not have identified him.”
In an introductory post on the forum, Hannam said that he had “grown desperate” after “seeing what’s happening” to the country. He went on to describe himself as a fascist in messages to other users, and revealed that he was already a member of National Action’s London branch.
Hannam had attended National Action meetings with the group’s co-founder, been to boxing camps organised by the group, and had been photographed with other members in front of a National Action flag.
He even appeared in a promotional video for NS131, an alias group of National Action.
Hannam’s trial had started on 8 March, but information about it was not allowed to be reported until it had concluded as a result of a reporting ban.
On 23 March he pleaded guilty to the possession of an indecent image of a child.
