The Order of Hagal reportedly had significant international contacts, with overseas training, links to Ukraine militants, and even claimed to have met with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. A militant neo-Nazi group raided by Italian anti-terror police this week was ready to carry out violent attacks and had numerous transnational connections, including a member who claimed to have met with Donald Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, according to media reports citing police. Italian police said on Tuesday they had arrested five members of a white supremacist terror organisation called the Order of Hagal, which was based in Marigliano in the province of Naples and promoted occult neo-Nazi, Holocaust-denial and anti-vax ideology. Four men, aged between 47 and 25, were arrested on the grounds of association for the purpose of terrorism or subversion of the democratic order, police said, while a fifth was arrested for disseminating propaganda and instigating crimes on the grounds of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination. (…) Beneath this, core members of the group were involved in even more extreme activities. Police said the group took part in regular paramilitary training, including courses overseas – reportedly in Poland – where members received hand-to-hand combat and firearms instruction. Members of the group were ready to take violent action against police and civilian targets, according to reports, with intercepted communications revealing one member talking about carrying out a massacre “like the one in New Zealand” at a police barracks in Marigliano – a reference to a terrorist attack upon two mosques in Christchurch in 2019 that killed 51 people – and another speaking of attacking a shopping centre in Naples. The group’s international links reportedly extended beyond the foreign training camps. Italian media reports, citing police, said that the group had direct contacts with a number of Ukrainian ultranationalist groups including Azov and Right Sector, and that one of the suspects police had not been able to locate was a Ukrainian citizen who was believed to be in his homeland, fighting the Russian invasion with one of these armed groups. Moreover, one of the arrested men, 25-year-old Giampiero Testa, also claimed to have met with American alt-right ideologue Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, during a visit to Trisulti, the sprawling 13th-century Italian monastery where Bannon was attempting to set up a right-wing think tank. In 2018, Bannon announced his plans to set up the think tank, “The Academy of the Judeo-Christian West,” to train a new generation of European nationalists in his right-wing populist ideology, through the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI), a conservative Catholic institution founded by his British associate, Benjamin Harnwell. The DHI was evicted from the monastery, a listed national monument, last year following a protracted legal battle, with Harnwell facing an ongoing criminal prosecution for fraud in relation to the project. He denies any wrongdoing
via vice: Italian Cops Take Down Occult Neo-Nazi Group Preparing Violent Attacks