An Austrian man was sentenced to 19 months in prison on Tuesday for breaking Austria’s anti-Nazi glorification laws by displaying a swastika tattooed on his scrotum, among other things, the Kronen Zeitung paper reported.
The man, who can’t be named due to Austria’s privacy laws, was accused of showing his private parts – after they'd reportedly been tattooed by his brother following a heavy drinking session – to his army colleagues on the last day of military exercises on 13 September 2019. The defendant was also allegedly caught posting Nazi propaganda online including photos with banned symbols from the Bunker Museum Wurzenpass, and seen drinking "Hitler wine."
The man said in the court that he couldn’t “give a reasonable explanation for why he did it” but admitted that most of his actions were “nonsense.”
"I was in a relevant group," the defendant told the court on Tuesday. “The forbidden was appealing – but we all enormously underestimated how much a mistake this was.”
According to a separate report from the 5 Minuten portal, the man’s tattoo is no longer visible. The verdict is not said to be final, as the man’s lawyer pledged to appeal the sentence, which apparently also included a punishment for illegal possession of firearms.
