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NAZI

French police release neo-Nazi Vikernes

The Norwegian neo-Nazi Kristian 'Varg' Vikernes was released by French police late on Thursday after spending two days in custody. Despite the French government describing him as "dangerous" police found no evidence he was planning a terror attack.

French police release neo-Nazi Vikernes
Kristian 'Varg' Vikernes, pictured in 1999 and Camouflaged vehicles outside his home in Corrèzes, central France. He was released on Thursday. Photos: AFP/Patrick Bernard

The French authorities on Thursday released from custody a Norwegian extremist who was detained on suspicion of plotting a "major terrorist act".

Kristian Vikernes, 40, was detained together with his French wife on Tuesday but investigators found no evidence of a terror plot, the source said.

His wife Marie Cachet was freed on Wednesday.

The pair were brought in from their home in the central French region of Correze over fears Vikernes, who served 16 years in prison in Norway for stabbing a fellow musician to death, was planning an attack.

On Wednesday, Vikernes's lawyer Julien Freyssinet said that the Norwegian was far from preparing a terror act, describing him as a "survivalist".

Survivalism is a movement of people who actively prepare for emergencies – by for instance stockpiling food, water and medicine or building protective structures – and sometimes believe a social, political or natural catastrophe is imminent.

He said weapons seized by officers at the couple's home had been acquired "completely legally and without hiding a thing, as part of a philosophy followed by the couple – that of survivalism."

The interior ministry said at the time of the arrest that Vikernes was "close to the neo-Nazi movement" and could have been preparing a "major terrorist act".

However Interior Minister Manuel Valls later conceded no specific target or project had been identified, but authorities had decided to "act before and not afterwards."

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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.

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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