Hitler-obsessed teenager admits ‘swinging axe at Iranian stranger’s neck’
Far-right Nazi sympathiser Alina Burns has pleaded guilty to attempted murder after attacking an Iranian man with an axe.
Burns, aged 18 at the time, attacked Mohammed Mahmoodi, an Iranian Kurd, outside of a Bristol barber shop in early August last year.
Burns was a member of the Patriotic Alternative, a far-right group led by neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Mark Collett.
The group says it wants almost all non-white people removed from the UK, a rhetoric Burns appeared to support.
Mahmoodi managed to escape unscathed, but when officers detained her, they found a scalpel and several darts on Burns.
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She even told officers that she swung at Mahmoodi because she ‘wanted to cut his neck’.
Officers found worrying rhetoric after searching her home, including an email in which she wrote, ‘Kill all Jews and Muslims in Britain, please.’
Police also found a message where Burns said she ‘realised my role in existence: I am the embodiment of hell, destined to annihilate everything holy I bear witness to’.
Her diaries and notebooks included notes about Adolf Hitler, and her search history included what age you had to be to buy an axe in the United Kingdom.
Shortly before the attack last year, she emailed an associate and said: ‘Land is reclaimed through terror. Better if they flee out of fear rather than displace us in our own home.’
Burns is on trial for attempted murder, having pleaded guilty after admitting she bought the axe to use to kill the man.
She previously denied having a terrorist motive, but said ‘fair enough’ when she was arrested for the crime.
Last summer, another teenage member of the Patriotic Alternative was caught by MI5 as he tried to buy a gun for an attack has said he was inspired by the murder of MP Jo Cox.
Alfie Coleman was detained during an undercover operation while he paid £3,500 for a Makarov pistol and ammunition in a supermarket car park.
Coleman believed in ‘the supremacy of white people and neo-Nazism’ and idolised Thomas Mair, who killed the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, jurors heard.
The teenager had approached far-right organisation Patriotic Alternative in July 2021, saying he wanted to participate in its activism.
The Old Bailey heard that he had allegedly planned a terrorist attack in 2022 on ‘Mayor of London house’, with his target specified as the address of the Lord Mayor of London.
His plan included a reference to planting an explosive in a cash machine and the use of knives and crossbows, but was later abandoned, jurors heard. His case is currently undergoing a retrial.
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