From the West Oz:
Man ‘agreed to join ANM plot’
RYAN PEDLERA young Perth man testified yesterday that two leaders of the Australian Nationalist Movement asked him and another ANM recruit to firebomb four Chinese restaurants in Perth in 2004 and they readily agreed to.
Daniel Tyrone Klavins said ANM leader Jack van Tongeren and deputy John Anthony Van Blitterswyk asked him and Matthew Peter Billing to conduct the firebombings the day before Mr van Tongeren released his book, The ANM Story.
“I was enthusiastic, I said yes,” Mr Klavins, 29, said. He claimed Mr Billing was also keen and suggested that down the track they could firebomb up to 10 Chinese restaurants a night and target Asians, “as in killing them or physically hurting them”. Mr Klavins was giving evidence at the District Court trial of Mr Van Blitterswyk on a charge of conspiring with four other alleged ANM members Mr van Tongeren, Mr Klavins, Mr Billing and Ian “Monty” Johnson to firebomb four Chinese restaurants in Perth between May 1 and August 6, 2004.
Mr Klavins told the court he met Mr van Tongeren and Mr Van Blitterswyk in October 2002 and was told that Mr van Tongeren was in charge of the ANM and that Mr Van Blitterswyk was second-in-charge.
Mr Klavins said he agreed to join the ANM and set up his own unit, to which he later recruited more than 40 people. He admitted he was racist at the time and that he had set up a racist group called the White Devils. He said the ANM ’s objective was to “take over Australia and give it back to its people” and that Mr van Tongeren wanted to be the nation ’s leader, send all foreigners home, abolish taxation and make Alice Springs the national capital.
Mr Klavins said it was on June 6, 2004, when Mr van Tongeren and Mr Van Blitterswyk asked him and Mr Billing to firebomb four Chinese restaurants.
Mr Klavins said the firebombings were to be conducted “within two or three weeks, the day before the release of the book The ANM Story, by Jack van Tongeren”.
But Mr Klavins said that Mr van Tongeren told him a short time later that Mr Johnson would replace him in conducting the firebombings and that the bombings should be delayed until after a “poster-up campaign”.
Mr Klavins said that in July 2004, he, Mr Billing and four other men put up stickers, posters and graffiti at a Menora synagogue, a Mt Lawley Chinese restaurant, a Bayswater police station and other locations featuring swastikas and messages including “Jews out”, “Gooks will die” and “The ANM Story, read it now”. Mr Klavins was arrested shortly after the graffiti campaign.
In his opening address yesterday, defence lawyer Richard Utting told the jury there was a great temptation for co-accused, such as Mr Johnson and Mr Klavins, to minimise their role in an affair and maximise the role of others.
