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Alleged Swedish Immigrant-Killer Bought Goods from U.S. Neo-Nazis

Peter Mangs, who went on trial in Sweden this week for allegedly killing three people and attempting to kill 12 others because he hated immigrants, apparently did business with America’s leading neo-Nazi organization at least once.

Mangs is believed to have shot his victims, who included many Muslims and other immigrants in his home city of Malmo, during a seven-year spree that stretched from 2003 to 2010. In October 2010, police asked the public for help in locating a gunman who they feared was targeting immigrants in the city, where some 40% of residents or their parents were born outside Sweden, and a tip led to Mangs. Police found a pistol, a silencer and a vest for carrying a spare gun barrel in his home.

Two years before the shooting spree began, Mangs, who is now 40, made a purchase from the , which was then the most important neo-Nazi group in America, and one that was well known to European radicals. Records obtained by Hatewatch do not show what Mangs bought, but the group’s National Vanguard Books at the time had only a few items matching the total Mangs spent, $11.95, on May 10, 2001. One of them was Hunter, a novel written by the late Alliance chief that depicted the nighttime murders of mixed-race couples using a silenced pistol.

Some details of Mangs’ alleged actions match the book closely. The novel describes how its lead character removed the barrel of his pistol and modified it in order to attach a silencer. In addition to using a silencer in the same way, Mangs is accused of using different barrels on his pistol in an attempt to defeat ballistic tracing of the bullets he used. In at least one case, the killings were similar to those carried out in Hunter. In October 2009, a young couple was shot while sitting in a parked car in Malmo, according to The New York Times. Hunter depicts a mixed-race couple being murdered with a pistol as they sat in a parked vehicle.

Mangs could have learned of the National Alliance while in this country. Using the same E-mail address employed to send in his National Alliance order, mangspeter@hotmail.com, Mangs several times, and he mentioned in one of those E-mails being in the United States between 1996 and 1999.

Mangs, who also mentioned talking to a psychiatrist in Sweden, said in one of the E-mails that he had undergone a trepanning operation for hydrocephalus (excess brain water). Trepanning is an operation that involves boring a hole into the skull, usually to relieve dangerous pressure from a swollen brain. It has also been advocated by certain modern hucksters who suggest that trepanning will increase “brain blood volume” and therefore enhance a person’s consciousness.

The Mangs case is one of three major recent terror campaigns allegedly carried out by radical-right Europeans enraged at non-white or non-Christian immigration into their countries. Last July, Anders Breivik murdered 77 of his countrymen in Norway because, he said, they were enabling Muslim immigration. And in Germany, police are still investigating a neo-Nazi cell of three people who allegedly murdered 10 people, mostly Turkish immigrants, between 2000 and 2007.

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