Yahoo News Suspect entered 'Miss Hitler' competing as Miss Buchenwald to attract members to far-right group
A neo-Nazi terror suspect entered a “Miss Hitler” beauty contest in a bid to attract new members to a far-right extremist group, a court has heard.
Alice Cutter is alleged to have won the competition organised by National Action after taking on the nickname Buchenwald Princess in reference to the Nazi death camp.
The 22-year-old is standing trial at Birmingham Crown Court alongside her partner Mark Jones, who is accused of posing for a photograph while giving a Nazi salute in Buchenwald’s execution room.
Jones, 24, and Cutter, both of Mulhalls Mill, Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax, deny being members of National Action between December 2016 and September 2017.
The Crown also alleges that Garry Jack, 23, from Heathland Avenue, Shard End, Birmingham, and 18-year-old Connor Scothern, of Bagnall Avenue, Nottingham, are guilty of belonging to the banned organisation between the same dates.
Opening the case against the four defendants, prosecutor Barnaby Jameson QC said Jones flew to Germany in 2016 to visit Buchenwald.
After showing the jury a picture featuring two men standing in the camp’s execution room holding a National Action flag, Mr Jameson told the jury: “Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp that stood out, even by the standards of Nazi concentration camps, for its depravity.
“Like Auschwitz, Buchenwald is a permanent museum to honour the victims and remind the world of the horrors perpetrated in the name of Nazism.”
He said Cutter entered the National Action-organised beauty contest in June 2016 – days after the murder of MP Jo Cox.
The prosecutor told the jury of seven men and five women: “On 24 June 2016 National Action staged, if you can believe this, a beauty contest titled Miss Hitler 2016.
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“This was, no doubt, a publicity stunt to raise the group’s profile and attract more members.
“One of those who entered and, I think, in fact, won the competition, was Alice Cutter.
Mr Jameson told the jury the defendants were seeking to spread terror from “an ideology so warped, so extreme and so twisted, its continued existence will be shocking to many of you, if not all”.
The jury was shown a picture alleged to show Cutter wearing a National Action mask, which was posted online.
In an “interview” accompanying the photo, the competition entrant said: “It is important to me that there’s a balance of feminine to masculine in the movement – without feminine involvement, what would a movement be? A sad sausage fest with no appeal?
“We need to step up, be the lionesses we ought to be and rip apart the hyenas laughing at us as we get raped, beaten, brainwashed and de-feminised en masse.
“Hyenas have no part in our pride and never will.”
