Image copyright N Chadwick Image caption Stickers were put up at Aston University in July 2016

Five men accused of plastering a university campus with racist stickers posed for a photo while performing Nazi-style salutes, a court heard. Prosecutors said “threatening, abusive or at very least insulting” stickers stuck to signs at Aston University, Birmingham, were “recruitment tools” for the neo-Nazi National Action group. 'Butt-hurt students'

He said one, found on an entrance sign, showed a white figure giving a Nazi-type salute, with the words "White Zone - National Action". Another read: “Britain is ours – the rest must go.”

The men are accused of putting up the stickers on the afternoon of 9 July 2016. An image showed some of the men with the far right group's flag, and two of them giving Nazi-type salutes, posed in front of the university. Jurors were told they would see evidence of planning, including messages and a downloaded map of the campus. Opening the prosecution on Thursday, Kelly Brocklehurst said the defendants accepted they put the stickers up, but did not accept that they had incited racial hatred. “When you are faced with something that says White Zone and the image of somebody with a raised right arm, stickers with swastikas, we say: how can that not be threatening, abusive or at very least insulting?” the barrister said. “That is exactly the aim, or one of the aims, of what these defendants were seeking to achieve.”

He told the jury: “There’s likely no dispute about what they did, the dispute is likely about why they did it. But we say you can be, and will be, sure they intended racial hatred, and if not they were well aware of what those stickers were capable of achieving.”

The defendants, who are all said to have been members of National Action at the time, are: Chad Williams-Allen, 26, Dean Lloyd, 27, both of West Bromwich, and Garry Jack, 22, of Birmingham. A 22-year-old man from Lancashire, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who is charged with intending to commit acts of terrorism contrary to Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006 also appeared. The trial, expected to last up to three weeks, continues.
Five alleged members of British neo-Nazi group National Action go on trial in Birmingham charged with inciting racial hatred at Aston University. National Action is a banned terror group.