Finnish Police arrest four neo-Nazis who planned attacks on migrants and politicians
Finnish prosecutors have charged four Finnish men who are members of a domestic organization of radicals with planning racially-motivated attacks. Their targets were to have been critical infrastructure, migrants, and those whom they considered their political opponents, Finnish authorities informed the Associated Press.
The Finnish Government has just presented its plan to combat antisemitism and racism. Police said the men are also suspected of using 3D printers to produce weapons.
Allegedly, the men have been preparing for an armed conflict in Finland that was to have been motivated by racism. Three of the four men were charged with crimes connected with terrorism over the production of firearms and training with them.
Finnish news server YLE reported that the four follow the ideology of neo-Nazism, especially the concept of so-called accelerationism, which claims that fundamental societal transformations can be achieved only by accelerating different processes in society. “Because of their racist convictions, the suspects are being charged with preparing an armed conflict among groups in the population during which the killing of people and the undermining of social structures would take place using homemade firearms,” prosecutor Jukka Rappe said.
From the preliminary investigation it can be stated that the activity of those charged had not yet proceeded to the phase of preparing a specific attack. Coincidentally, the Finnish Government has presented its plan to combat antisemitism and racism at the same time as news of the arrests surfaced.
Among other matters, the Government is planning to make Holocaust denial a crime and is also researching the option of banning the use of communist and Nazi symbols. The coalition Government includes the nationalist Party of the Finns, and cabinet members have recently had their own problems with displays of extremism.
For example, Economics Minister and Vice Prime Minister Riikka Purra had to apologize in July for a defamatory, racist comment she published through the Internet in 2008. At the end of June, Economics Minister Vilehm Junnila resigned over comments in which his critics said he displayed Nazi sympathies.
Both politicians are from the Party of the Finns. “Each Government minister has renounced racism and committed to actively combating it,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the National Coalition Party said during a press conference.
