Rome: Two members, aged 21 and 18, of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist group AAST were arrested.

The State Police of Milano, Cagliari and Vicenza have executed two precautionary measures of the obligation to remain in residence and house arrest against a twenty-year-old of Romanian origin and an eighteen-year-old Italian within the Russian accelerationist network – present on Telegram – called AAST.

The measures carried out today come at the end of a complex investigative activity developed in the last year – under the direction of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Milano and Cagliari with the coordination of the National Anti-Mafia and Counter-Terrorism Directorate – by the local Digos in synergy with the Service for the Countering of Extremism and Internal Terrorism of the Central Directorate of the Prevention Police – Ucigos.

The investigation, carried out in synergy between the central and territorial offices, has allowed us to obtain important evidentiary evidence regarding the belonging to the same criminal context and the virtual knowledge of the two subjects, a circumstance which has made it appropriate to simultaneously execute the precautionary measures issued by the territorially competent GIP Offices at the Court at the request of the respective Public Prosecutor's Offices.

In particular, it emerged that the eighteen-year-old from Cagliari, now subjected to the precautionary measure of house arrest, is enrolled in AAST and within the connected to a supremacist terrorist association called The Base, attributable to the international program "White Suprematist Extremism", which have as their primary objective the committing acts of violence with the aim of terrorism and subversion for reasons of racial hatred.

Her violent nature had already revealed himself as a minor; in fact, in 2022, he was subjected to a personal, local and computer search delegated by the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Cagliari after having threatened a schoolmate with a knife, who had reprimanded him for hearing him praise Hitler.

Even after he came of age, he continued to engage in conduct of discrimination and racial hatred, in addition to other crimes, such as child pornography, cyber extortion in the subspecies of “sextortion”, theft of digital identity for extortion purposes.

In fact, it has been ascertained that the suspect maintains a dense network of virtual relationships with other Internet users, all orbiting around the supremacist galaxy, trying to gain credibility in these environments through the sharing of accelerationist propaganda content as well as through the commission of certain criminal acts on the territory, which he then sends to the administrators of the groups he frequents.

In this context, the aforementioned has made himself available to implement the association program in his own city and in his own nation, informing himself and training through the training courses provided by the aforementioned organizations on the Telegram channels dedicated and has searched the web several times information on weapons such as guns, tonfa, crossbows, tasers, deterrents and knuckle-dusters, comparing himself with other Internet users on how to obtain a gun; furthermore, he was the author of attempted aggravated extortion, sexual violence and child pornography against various individuals, including a 15-year-old, asking for money by threatening to disseminate sexual images and videos of her on WhatsApp and forcing her to perform sexual acts online and, subsequently, to forward them on Telegram in a group chat.

As regards the twenty-year-old Romanian citizen subject to the precautionary measure of the obligation to remain in residence, the complex investigation carried out by the State Police of Milano has provided broad and unequivocal evidence regarding the full contiguity of the suspect with the AAST network, of whose channels the same is an active administrator and has even been appointed new leader, following the alleged arrest of the group's previous leader.

The twenty-year-old, taking full advantage of an obvious avideo and photo editor skills and through the constant development of a complex network of social accounts is actively engaged in the promotion of the group through the creation and dissemination of propaganda content of a clearly supremacist nature, National Socialist, anti-Semitic/negationist and pro-Russian, while at the same time inciting users to use weapons and homemade explosives – for the manufacture of which the group's administrators, with evident training purposes, distribute numerous manuals – to be used to carry out criminal actions functional to the achievement of the group's goals, and carrying out constant proselytism and recruitment activities for the group, identifying anonymous users to enlist as AAST believers and soldiers with the aim of "using" them both for low-impact actions - such as slashing tires - against “subhumans”, non-whites, Muslims and enemies of the cause – either for more serious and structured criminal conduct or to carry out propaganda and recruitment activities.