A neo-Nazi leader is facing jail time after he was found guilty of intimidating police by hurling insults and threatening to publicly release personal information about an officer and his wife.<\/p>\n
Thomas Sewell, 32, represented himself in a contested hearing against the charges at Melbourne magistrates court, which ran for more than a week.<\/p>\n
He was arrested outside the court over a separate matter \u2013 an alleged attack on an Indigenous site \u2013 and taken into custody while the proceeding was happening on 2 September.<\/p>\n
The hearing recommenced and Sewell continued to represent himself from behind glass in the court dock, flanked by security officers.<\/p>\n
Sewell is accused of threatening to \u201cdox\u201d a police officer and his wife on podcasts in October and November last year, including threats to release personal information and wedding photos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m working out how to dox him because those doxing laws haven\u2019t come into effect yet,\u201d he told a podcast. \u201cLike his wedding photos, we\u2019ve got it all downloaded, he\u2019s a fucking idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n The police officer gave evidence to the hearing about feeling \u201chighly anxious\u201d about his and his family\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know what he was going to do with that information,\u201d he told the court.<\/p>\n The officer\u2019s wife did not give evidence in person to the hearing, but her statement was handed to the court.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt really intimidated and threatened, I felt like we were in danger,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Sewell claimed he was holding police to account and using his implied \u201cfreedom of communication\u201d about public affairs when he spoke about the officer and his family.<\/p>\n However, magistrate Michelle Hodgson on Friday found Sewell guilty of police intimidation and rejected his arguments, finding he had targeted the private life of the officer.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were threats of doxing, openly contemplating circulating this material,\u201d she told the court.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is evidence of personal animosity and insult, calling him a fucking asshole, and including his wife and family \u2013 that went well beyond political accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n She said Sewell\u2019s comments did not constitute legitimate engagement in political discussion or communication about public affairs and police accountability.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Sewell \u2026 has sought to weaponise personal information, personal insult and public exposure to instil fear, and used \u2026 speech as intimidation rather than as political communication,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Hodgson found him guilty of three charges of intimidation against a police officer and his wife, which can carry a term of imprisonment. She further ruled he was guilty of two counts of contravening personal safety orders, in November 2024, and not guilty of two other offences regarding contravention of those orders.<\/p>\n The magistrate found there was not enough evidence to prove Sewell failed to comply with police direction to hand over passwords to his devices during a warrant, and found him not guilty of that offence.<\/p>\n He will face a plea hearing on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n A number of Sewell\u2019s supporters, including Jacob Hersant, attended the court or watched online on Friday.<\/p>\n After the ruling broke for lunch, after 1.15pm, police were seen arresting another member of Sewell\u2019s neo-Nazi group outside the court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A neo-Nazi leader is facing jail time after he was found guilty of intimidating police by hurling insults…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-137087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}