Neo-Nazi group that attacked Madrid mosque on trial for inciting hatred

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) – The trial against members of the Spanish neo-Nazi group ‘Hogar Social Madrid’ has started. The radical Islamophobic group has been involved in orchestrating an attack on Madrid’s largest mosque.

Prosecutors are demanding three years in jail for inciting hatred against Muslims for the group’s leader, Melisa Domínguez Ruiz.

At the same time, a Spanish immigration association is pushing for a four-year prison sentence for the leader and prison sentences for 11 other group members.

The attack on the Madrid mosque occurred in October 2016.

Members of the Madrid-based neo-Nazi group allegedly threw smoke bombs and flares near the Islamic Cultural Center of Madrid and unfurled a banner saying: “Today Brussels. Tomorrow Madrid?,” with reference to an attack by ISIS in Brussels.

According to reports, the group later began harassing Muslims in the area and shouting Islamophobic statements.

It then shared images of their attacks on the mosque and accused it of financing ISIS. “Mosques, leave Spain,” read part of the publication that was shared over 2,000 times on social media.

At the trial, Madrid prosecutors argued that those actions helped create a climate of “clear hostility and violence towards the Muslim world,” according to Spanish daily El Espanol.

The daily also reports that the Hogar Social’s 33-year-old leader was unrepentant in court.

“The mosque finances jihadi terrorism, which continues ravaging Europe… what I said was the truth, and I’ll say it again today,” she told the court.

Hogar Social Madrid has organized anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant actions, vandalism and protests.

Muslim communities in Europe are increasingly being marginalized and socially ostracized as Islamophobia propagated by such groups continues unabated.