Activist ran race-hate sticker library, court told

Leeds Crown Court heard police found posters of Adolf Hitler at Samuel Melia's home

A far-right organiser set up an online library of white supremacist and neo-Nazi stickers for supporters to print out and display, prosecutors have told a jury.

Samuel Melia, a Yorkshire regional organiser for extreme right-wing group Patriotic Alternative, has gone on trial accused of distributing downloadable versions of stickers which were "intended to stir up racial hatred".

Leeds Crown Court heard Mr Melia, 34, set up a group called the Hundred Handers on the Telegram social media platform.

Mr Melia, of Pudsey, also denies encouraging racially aggravated criminal damage.

The defendant was the anonymous head of the Hundred Handers, and anyone who wanted to be a member would gain access to a library of stickers they could download, print and stick up, prosecutor Tom Storey said.

The court heard Mr Melia accepts setting up the Hundred Handers channel, which was named after a creature from Greek mythology, but denies intending for the stickers to be put up in any public place.

Jurors were told Mr Melia was arrested outside a post office in Leeds in April 2021 on suspicion of publishing or distributing material which may stir up racial hatred.

The officers who arrested him found a wallet in his pocket which contained stickers with the Hundred Handers logo and slogans including "Britons Build Britain" and "Equality or Quality - you can only have one".

'MP's office targeted'

The court heard police searched Mr Melia's house in Pudsey and found a label printer and stickers with slogans such as "It's OK to be white" and "Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in".

Mr Storey said further Hundred Handers-branded stickers contained slogans like "Reject white guilt", "nationalism is nurture", "Labour loves Muslim rape gangs", "We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066" and "Diversity - designed to fail, built to replace".

Jurors were told officers also found "key signs of the defendant's ideology" including a book by Oswald Mosley, who founded the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, as well as posters of Mosley and Adolf Hitler.

When police seized Mr Melia's mobile phone they accessed the Hundred Handers Telegram channel, of which the defendant was the sole administrator, and found a document setting out the rules of the organisation, Mr Storey said.

Police found an online archive of more than 200 stickers, with some intended for use in different countries including Germany, Australia and the US.

Mr Storey said the Hundred Handers Telegram channel had more than 3,500 subscribers and that a number of photographs had been posted to it of stickers in public locations including on lampposts, vending machines, public toilets, train stations and even on the door of an MP's constituency office.

The trial continues.