Former London police officer Benjamin Hannam (second from right) posing with other supporters of National Action, a British neo-Nazi group. Photo: Metropolitan Police.

A 22-year-old policeman in London is facing a lengthy jail sentence after being convicted of acting as a recruiter for a violent neo-Nazi organizations banned by the British government.

Benjamin Hannam was found guilty by a jury at London’s Old Bailey of being a member of National Action, a proscribed terrorist organization, along with two counts of possessing documents useful for terrorism and for fraud.

After Hannam’s arrest in March last year, detectives found an image on his iPhone showing him in police uniform, with a Hitler-style mustache superimposed on his face and a Nazi badge on his lapel.

Hannam had already been involved with National Action for two years when he joined the police force in 2018. He lied on his application form when asked if he had been involved with extremist groups or any organization whose aims “may contradict the duty to promote race equality.”

Commander Richard Smith, head of Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, said: “Obviously there will be some concern that somebody who was a member of a group like National Action was able to become a member of Metropolitan Police Service, but once we had identified that fact we acted very swiftly.”

Smith added that “having a mindset of that type is completely incompatible with being a police officer.”

Hannam’s activities with National Action were discovered when an anonymous hacker using the name “antifa-data” (anti-fascist data) hacked into a neo-Nazi forum called Iron March and published details of its 1,185 users online.

In an internal police review of Hannam’s case files while he was a serving officer found that there was “no evidence that Constable Hannam targeted individuals as a result of any right-wing views.”