A FAR-RIGHT anti-Islamic group has called for volunteers to join street patrols across Ireland so that people can “walk our streets without fear of being victims of crime”.
A Facebook page with the name The Soldiers of Odin Northern Ireland has asked people who want to “volunteer for street patrols” to provide their “name, age and location”.
There is also a Soldiers of Odin Ireland Facebook page, with one recent post stating “Soldiers we need more of you” and that the group will be “starting up with street patrolling very soon”.
In another post the anti-immigrant group says the purpose of the patrol is to allow people to “walk our streets without fear of being victims of crime” and states that “if you need to defend yourselves, or to intervene in attacks, violence allowed”.
The Northern Ireland Facebook group appears to have been set up last month and has been liked by nearly 300 people, including supporters of the far-right group Ulster Awake, which distributed leaflets attacking members of the Muslim faith and multiculturalism in the north late last year.
Soldiers of Odin was formed in Finland last year and the group claims to carry out regular street patrols in 23 cities and towns across the Scandinavian country.
Finnish media have reported widely on the Odins’ links to neo-Nazi movements.
The organisation claims to be active in a number of European countries and on its Northern Ireland Facebook page has posted a speech by a prominent neo-Nazi who reportedly has links to Norwegian killer Anders Breivik and who has been convicted by a French court of inciting racial hatred through his blog.