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

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - The trial against members of the Spanish neo-Nazi group Hogar Social Madrid for attacking Spain’s largest mosque kicked off on Tuesday.

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, the same day Daesh killed 32 people in a terrorist attack in Brussels.

In response, 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?”

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 Daesh. “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 toward 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 is a far-right social center that emerged in 2014, offering food and economic assistance to Spanish people only.

The group has also organized other anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant actions, vandalism and protests.

Hogar Social's social networks have also contained an abundance of Nazi memes and content, and its members have repeatedly been photographed making fascist salutes.