French prosecutors said on Thursday they had opened an investigation into a Nazi-themed party attended by British MP Aidan Burley that led to him losing his post as a parliamentary aide.

"/> French prosecutors said on Thursday they had opened an investigation into a Nazi-themed party attended by British MP Aidan Burley that led to him losing his post as a parliamentary aide.

" />
SHARE
COPY LINK

NAZI

France probes Nazi-themed party attended by British MP

French prosecutors said on Thursday they had opened an investigation into a Nazi-themed party attended by British MP Aidan Burley that led to him losing his post as a parliamentary aide.

“A preliminary investigation started yesterday,” local prosecutor Patrick Quincy told AFP, as authorities opened a case file on a drunken night out by a group of British men in the French Alpine ski resort of Val Thorens.

 

The investigation was launched following a complaint from French anti-racism group SOS Racisme. Quincy said he had been unaware of the incident before the complaint. 

“I was not at all informed of this incident, which did not cause a fuss in Val Thorens,” he said.

Burley, 32, was sacked from his role as a parliamentary private secretary to Transport Secretary Justine Greening, after pictures taken at the party earlier this month were published in the British press.

Burley, a lawmaker in Cameron’s centre-right Conservatives, represents Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, central England.

British stag parties, held before a man gets married, are typically jovial, boozy nights out, often with the groom-to-be in embarrassing fancy dress.

Burley was photographed sitting next to the stag, who was wearing the uniform of a World War II-era Germany SS officer — an apparent offence in France, where Nazi regalia is banned.

The Conservative Party said in a statement that Burley was removed from his post because of his “offensive and foolish” behaviour at the party.

Prime Minister David Cameron also asked for a full investigation.

Burley issued an “unreserved, wholehearted and fulsome apology” over the party, in a letter to the Jewish Chronicle newspaper.

“What was happening was wrong and I should have completely dissociated myself from it. I had a choice, and I made the wrong choice not to leave. I apologize for this error of judgment,” he wrote.


Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS