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Two prominent Melbourne neo-Nazis have complained in court about being targeted by state and federal police over their white supremacist political beliefs, during a hearing to determine their sentence for an assault while bushwalking with far-right adherents.

Thomas Sewell, 30, the self-proclaimed leader of the National Socialist Network (NSN), and co-offender Jacob Hersant, 25, appeared in the County Court over an assault on three bushwalkers who filmed Sewell and Hersant’s group as they gathered at the Cathedral Range State Park at Taggerty on May 8, 2021.

Jacob Hersant outside the County Court on Tuesday.Credit: Luis Ascui

Alexander Patton, a barrister representing Hersant, told Judge Kellie Blair on Tuesday that his client felt he was being unnecessarily targeted and surveilled by authorities.

“Mr Hersant refers to being unnecessarily targeted, under constant watch due to his political opinions,” Patton said, “[which is] objectively true.”

Patton said his client was being excessively monitored by police, who would wait outside Hersant’s home and gesture when family peered through the curtains at them.

“[It’s the case for Hersant that] members of various state and Commonwealth bodies sit on the bottom of the car and wave at he and his family through the living room window,” he said.

Thomas Sewell leaves court on Tuesday.Credit: Luis Ascui

Sewell’s barrister, Michael McGrath, echoed those sentiments and said the NSN leader took issue with the way police had dealt with his belief system.

“It might not be a political belief that I shared, but he’s entitled to have his political belief, and he takes issue with the way that the police deal with his political belief,” he said.

McGrath said Sewell’s beliefs might also bring him into conflict with corrections staff.

“Mr Sewell has strong views. He’s entitled to have certain views. Whether or not we agree with them, or disagree with them, and the fact that he has certain views perhaps puts them at risk of conflicting with corrections.”

Both men pleaded guilty to a charge of violent disorder in August and remain on bail.

In an earlier hearing, the court heard some members of the group were wearing balaclavas when the three bushwalkers were set upon and terrorised at the Victorian camping spot.

Police said one hiker crashed their car into a boulder in an attempt to get away.

When Sewell applied for bail over the matter in 2021, police told the court he publicly described himself as a “political soldier for the white race and Adolf Hitler is my leader”, and that he adhered to neo-Nazi ideology and believes he is in a “race war”.

The National Socialist Network at a gathering in the Grampians.

At the time of the violent disorder offence, Sewell was on bail over an attack on a security guard outside Channel Nine’s Docklands headquarters – which also houses The Age offices – before an A Current Affair broadcast about his group in March 2021. Sewell was later found guilty of that attack and placed on an 18-month community corrections order with 150 hours of community service.

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