According to a statement by local police officers, the accusations are directed at three men who were reportedly seen making the controversial gesture as they popped in for a drink in a bar while off-duty.
Two German federal police officers and a voluntary security force member are being probed over incitement allegations after a witness claimed that they were making the infamous Nazi salute and expressing racist remarks while drinking in a pub in Rosenheim, southern Bavaria.
The police issued a statement saying the three men were engaged in «table talk» and were heavily influenced by alcohol, which could soften the sentence. According to a police spokesman, cited by the DPA, the federal police officers, aged 44 and 45, were not employed by a local law enforcement agency.
Nazi salutations in public, as well as use of respective symbols and insignia, are illegal and may carry a sentence in Germany. Last year, an American citizen was beaten by a local for making the «sieg heil» salute; shortly after, two Chinese tourists were arrested for making the notorious gesture in front of Berlin’s Reichstag.
There is an array of other countries, along with Germany, where performing the Nazi salute — a short-hand for fascism — may see perpetrators end up behind bars, namely Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Sweden.
