13/03/24
Samuel Melia: Far-right activist jailed after sticker campaign
A far-right activist has been jailed after a judge branded him an "antisemite" with "Nazi sympathies".
Samuel Melia, 34, was found guilty earlier this year of inciting racial hatred after a series of "stickering" incidents between 2019 and 2021.
Melia, from Pudsey in West Yorkshire, was sentenced to two years in prison at Leeds Crown Court on Friday.
Judge Tom Bayliss KC said: "The publication of this kind of material is corrosive to our society."
Melia was the head of the Telegram Messenger group Hundred Handers, a social media channel that generated racist and anti-immigration stickers that were printed off and displayed in public places.
The stickers contained "ethnic slurs" about minority communities which displayed a "deep-seated antipathy to those groups", the court heard.
'Nationalistic and vitriolic'
The court also heard Melia had an "obsessive interest" in Sir Oswald Mosley, who founded the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, and that he was attempting to "peddle the same antisemitism".
Melia had a poster of Hitler in his garage, a book by Mosley in his bedroom and it was found that much of the material Hundred Handers published was "xenophobic, nationalistic and vitriolic".
Judge Bayliss said: "For the first time since the 1930s, a real risk of gross, potentially violent, antisemitism is becoming normalised on our streets.
"It has been used before to tear at the heart of Western democracy.
"It must not be allowed to do so again."
After police arrested Melia in April 2021, they searched his house and found a label printer and stickers with anti-immigration messages.
The court previously heard the Hundred Handers Telegram channel had more than 3,500 subscribers and an anti-immigration sticker was even placed on the door of an MP's constituency office.
It was also said that media reports of the "stickering" linked to the group "extended from Cornwall to Northern Ireland".
'You are an antisemite'
The judge told Melia: "I am quite sure that your mindset is that of a racist and a white supremacist.
"You hold Nazi sympathies and you are an antisemite."
Melia, who was also found guilty of encouraging racially-aggravated criminal damage, was sentenced to two years for each charge to run concurrently.
He must serve up to half his sentence in custody before being released on licence.
Det Ch Sup James Dunkerley, head of Counter Terrorism Policing North East, said: "Those that seek to bring hatred to our communities through actions such as stickering will be identified and brought to justice."
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