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NAZI

Man fined for Nazi salute

In the second case of its kind in recent months, a man from Småland in southern Sweden has been fined for making Nazi salutes shouting ”Heil Hitler”.

Published: 27 August 2011 11:31 CEST

The 37-year-old man was arrested during the spring by security guards outside the Sports Restaurant in Växsjö, making the universally recognised arm raised salute and shouting Nazi slogans. Around 15 guests complained when the man, who admitted that he was under the influence of alcohol and has a habit of talking about Nazis when he is drunk, made the gestures.

The 37-year-old, who was found guilty and fined 2,400 kronor, added that although it is not unusual for him to do such things, he had no memory of events on that particular evening, reports Smålandsposten.

It is the second time in successive months that someone has been charged with the offence, which is classified as hate crime.

In a case heard in July, a 16-year-old boy from Västra Götaland in southwest Sweden was also found guilty of the same offence after he was caught making gestures in a McDonald’s restaurant in Alingsås in early April.

The boy admitted the charges of hate crime but denied another of causing criminal damage after a window in the restaurant was smashed.

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NAZI

Austrian rapper arrested over neo-Nazi songs

Austrian authorities said Tuesday they have arrested a rapper accused of broadcasting neo-Nazi songs, one of which was used by the man behind a deadly anti-Semitic attack in Germany.

Published: 3 February 2021 12:23 CET
Austrian rapper arrested over neo-Nazi songs
Austrian police officers patrol at the house where Adolf Hitler was born during the anti-Nazi protest in Braunau Am Inn, Austria on April 18, 2015. Photo: JOE KLAMAR / AFP

“The suspect has been arrested on orders of the Vienna prosecutors” and transferred to prison after a search of his home, said an interior ministry statement.

Police seized a mixing desk, hard discs, weapons, a military flag from the Third Reich era and other Nazi objects during their search.

Austrian intelligence officers had been trying for months to unmask the rapper, who went by the pseudonym Mr Bond and had been posting to neo-Nazi forums since 2016.

The suspect, who comes from the southern region of Carinthia, has been detained for allegedly producing and broadcasting Nazi ideas and incitement to hatred.

“The words of his songs glorify National Socialism (Nazism) and are anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic,” said the interior ministry statement.

One of his tracks was used as the sound track during the October 2019 attack outside a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.

In posts to online forums based in the United States, the rapper compared the man behind the 2019 Christchurch shootings that killed 51 people at a New Zealand mosque to a saint, and translated his racist manifesto into German.

Last September, an investigation by Austrian daily Der Standard and Germany's public broadcaster ARD said that the musician had been calling on members of neo-Nazi online forums and chat groups to carry out terrorist attacks for several years.

They also reported that his music was used as the soundtrack to the live-streamed attack in Halle, when a man shot dead two people after a failed attempt to storm the synagogue.

During his trial last year for the attack, 28-year-old Stephan Balliet said he had picked the music as a “commentary on the act”. In December, a German court jailed him for life.

“The fight against far-right extremism is our historical responsibility,” Austria's Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said Tuesday.

Promoting Nazi ideology is a criminal offence in Austria, which was the birth place of Adolph Hitler.

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