Nazi tattoo trial in Berlin

A 27-year-old man, member of the right-wing party NPD, was sentenced by a local Berlin court to six months parole for sedition and inciting hatred. The sentence has not come into effect as yet.

State prosecutors had demanded that the accused be sentenced to 10 months in jail without parole because he seemed to be "a politically motivated criminal, who had trampled on the core values of the German constitution." Under German law, any person found guilty of inciting hatred and violence against certain sections of the population can be sentenced to a maximum of five years in jail.

The right-wing activist was reported to have publicly displayed his fascist tattoo at a swimming pool in November. The case came to the police's attention after another visitor at the location took a picture of the drawing and posted it on social media.

The man wore the tattoo on his back, slightly above his waistband. The design had an outline of the Auschwitz concentration camp, with the words "Jedem das Seine," roughly translated as "To each his own," inscribed underneath the picture. The words are engraved on the entrance to Buchenwald, the Nazi regime's largest death camp which served as a prison for over a quarter of a million Jews, gypsies and political opponents of Hitler's regime between 1937 and 1945.

Originally from the eastern German state of Saxony, the right-winger was a repeat offender and had been previously convicted of manhandling, impersonating a government official and driving without a proper license. He is being represented by the lawyer Wolfgang Nahrath, who is currently standing for neo-Nazi Ralf Wohlleben, an accused in the trial against the neo-Nazi group NSU.

mg/jil (dpa, epd)