Neo-Nazi jailed after assaulting Asian man on day of Lee Rigby’s funeral

A hardened neo-Nazi was today jailed for five years after his unprovoked assault meant an Asian man almost lost his ear.

Richard Harris, 38, assaulted Zahoor Hussain with a beer bottle on the day of Lee Rigby’s funeral in July 2013.

Harris was enraged that Hussain (and others) were speaking with “attractive white women” so he shouted in their direction “What are you doing drinking with terrorists?”

Mr Hussain peacefully intervened but Harris retorted with a barrage of racist abuse that labelled him an ‘animal’ who ‘did not belong in this country’. He then grabbed Hussain by the testicles and hit him over the head with a full bottle of beer – it left his victim unconscious and his ear almost severed from his scalp.

During the trial, the court learnt that Mr Harris has a swastika tattoo and belongs to an obscure neo-Nazi group called White Movement, this white supremacist movement dates back to the 1960s and has links to the National Front and British National Party. It is also a deeply violent, anti-Semitic, racist group.

A photo of Adolf Hitler hangs in Harris’s living room. Harris believes that Hitler spoke ‘common sense’ on a range of issues and openly admitted Holocaust Denial in Newport Crown Court.

Judge Jonathan Ferris told Harris: “You are a dangerous extremist who is capable of extreme violence.”

Ferris continued: “You are a member of an extreme racist organisation. You are a racist. You attacked the victim because he was socialising with a group of white women, one of whom was pregnant. It was violence motivated by your extreme racist views”.

Police discovered a plethora of far-right material in Harris’s property and pictures on his mobile phone included a black man being shot for impregnating a white woman.

The anti-Muslim attack left Mr Hussain with hearing problems but the judge paid tribute to his courage (and others) that helped bring justice.