Jury told far-right regional organiser from Pudsey was head of racist sticker Telegram channel

A far-right supporter set up an online library of white supremacist and neo-Nazi stickers for fellow sympathisers to print out and put up in their area, prosecutors have told a jury.

Samuel Melia, a Yorkshire regional organiser for extreme right-wing group Patriotic Alternative, is on trial accused of distributing downloadable versions of stickers intended to stir up racial hatred and encouraging racially aggravated criminal damage.

Leeds Crown Court heard Mr Melia, 34, set up a group called the Hundred Handers on the Telegram social media platform and was the anonymous head of the organisation.

Anyone who wanted to be a member would become one of the “hands” and gain access to a library of stickers they could download, print and stick up around the UK and abroad, prosecutor Tom Storey said.

Mr Storey told the court the practice of “stickering” was used to spread the message that there were people in that area with overtly racist views and attract like-minded people, but also to “warn or intimidate members of non-Christian religions, or those from non-white races, that they were being targeted”.

“In so doing, the ultimate purpose of these stickers was to stir up racial hatred,” said Mr Storey.

The court heard Melia accepts setting up the Hundred Handers channel, which was named after a creature from Greek mythology, but denies intending for the stickers to be put up in any public place.

Melia was arrested outside a post office in Leeds in April 2021 on suspicion of publishing or distributing material which may stir up racial hatred.

The officers who arrested him found a wallet in his pocket which contained stickers with the Hundred Handers logo on and slogans including “Britons Build Britain” and “Equality or Quality – you can only have one”.

Police searched Melia’s house in Pudsey, West Yorkshire, and found a label printer and stickers with slogans such as “It’s ok to be white” and “Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in”.

Mr Storey said further Hundred Handers branded stickers contained slogans like “Reject white guilt”, “nationalism is nurture”, “Labour loves Muslim rape gangs”, “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” and “Diversity – designed to fail, built to replace”.

Officers also found “key signs of the defendant’s ideology” including a book by Oswald Mosley, who founded the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, as well as posters of Mosley and Adolf Hitler.

When police seized Melia’s mobile phone they accessed the Hundred Handers Telegram channel, of which the defendant was the sole administrator, and found a document setting out the rules of the organisation, Mr Storey said.

The document stated: “The Hundred Handers are a network of activists, each one a powerful one-man cell.”

Under the question “how does it work?”, the document said: “The Hundred Handers have a Head who curates the Archive, all Hands source their material from this Archive.

"Ideas for new stickers and pictures of postings can be submitted to the Head.

“Obtaining a printer and downloading the archive is all a Hand needs to do to become their own printing press alongside hundreds of others using the same material."

Police found an online archive of more than 200 stickers, with some intended for use in different countries including Germany, Australia and the USA. It also contained a folder with “tips” including “wiping down stickers with your palm or sleeve to remove any fingerprints, placing longer, denser stickers in places where people wait, eg. bus stops, train stations, etc. and avoid[ing] places with lots of CCTV”.

Examples of the most “extreme” stickers identified by police included “Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back”, “Mass immigration is white genocide”, “They seek conquest not asylum” and “There is a war on whites”.

Mr Storey said the Hundred Handers Telegram channel had over 3,500 subscribers and that a number of photographs had been posted to it of stickers in public locations including on lampposts, vending machines, public toilets, train stations and even on the door of an MP’s constituency office.

Mr Storey said: “Also found within the defendant’s Telegram posts and chat were messages which make clear that he expected that Hundred Handers stickers would be displayed in public places, and also that he had placed stickers in such places himself.

"He noted that there was to be a BLM (Black Lives Matter) protest in his town, and that he was going to ‘plaster the surrounding area the night before’.”

Mr Melia denies both charges and the trial continues.

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