Neo-Nazi cleaner ‘fascinated with Hitler’ caught with manual on how to make home-made submachine gun

The court was told Dias shared his extreme views in WhatsApp messages with people said to be ‘schoolboy friends’

A neo-Nazi cleaner living in North West London who admitted collecting a stash of terrorist manuals from the age of 16, including how to make a home-made submachine gun, has been jailed, the Metropolitan Police said.

Portuguese national Vitor Dias had a fascination with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi creed when he downloaded material from the internet over four years, the Old Bailey previously heard.

Dias, now 22, pleaded guilty to four counts of possessing a document containing information useful for terrorist purposes with a further three similar offences to lie on the court file. On Thursday, Dias was sentenced at the Old Bailey to a total of three years in jail, the force said.

He was also given a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order. Prosecutor Christopher Amis told the court the defendant grew up in Brazil before moving to England with his family in 2020 and working as a cleaner.

Following raids on his home in Willesden Green, police found that between 2019 and 2023, when Dias was aged between 16 and 20, he had collected terrorist material and information demonstrating a extreme mindset. It included information on how to make explosives and ammunition, and building a home-made submachine gun “from scratch” using metal sheets and tubes.

Mr Amis said: “The material in his possession and communications in which he has taken part indicate that Vitor Dias is an adherent of Nazi ideology and far-right political causes, embracing as it does a hatred of Jews, LGBT persons and foreigners.

“What we suggest is that he deliberately accessed, and therefore came into possession of, material from the internet which, if he were a terrorist, would have been useful for his purposes.”

The court was told Dias shared his extreme views in WhatsApp messages with people said to be “schoolboy friends”. Dias continued to access terrorist material even after being warned by police not to in September 2022.

Mr Amis said the evidence showed Dias was “deliberately downloading material from different, specific sites of interest and not merely stumbling across material he wasn’t really interested in and didn’t care to look at”. Police raided Dias’s home as part of an investigation into indecent images of children being posted online earlier in 2022.

Dias was not arrested but two mobile phones were seized and the contents were downloaded and analysed, the force said. A large amount of extreme right-wing terrorist material was recovered, including guides on how to make explosives, firearms and ammunition.

After sentencing, Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “This case demonstrates that we will arrest and prosecute anyone accessing terrorist material. I am grateful to the work of colleagues in the Wembley Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation unit who uncovered Dias’s offending after his phones were seized.

“This case was also a successful example of the use of risk management software installed on the devices of those convicted of sexual offences.

“This case demonstrates that units from across the Met are committed to safeguarding vulnerable victims and specialist resources from counter terrorism will support the excellent work of officers and staff. Their excellent work allowed my officers to uncover the threat Dias posed.”

My London