Chinese tourists quizzed over Nazi salutes
Print Edition
TWO Chinese tourists were detained in Berlin for making Nazi salutes for photos in front of the Reichstag parliament building, a police spokeswoman said yesterday.
The holidaymakers were spotted by officers on a routine patrol on Saturday snapping pictures of each other making the banned gesture outside the historic landmark in the heart of the German capital.
“A probe on suspicion of using the symbols of anti-constitutional organizations was opened against the two Chinese men, aged 36 and 49,” the spokeswoman said.
The pair were questioned at a police station before their release on 500 euros (US$589) bail each.
Using the symbols of anti-constitutional organizations, a charge frequently leveled against members of far-right groups, can carry a sentence of up to three years in prison or a fine.
The spokeswoman said the men could leave the country during the investigation and that if a fine is handed down, the bail money they had already paid would likely cover it.
The Reichstag housed the assemblies of the German Empire, the inter-war Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany until it was destroyed by a suspicious fire in 1933.
In the wake of the blaze, Adolf Hitler consolidated his power over Germany, eventually unleashing World War II, which claimed an estimated 20 million lives in Europe, and the Holocaust, in which millions of victims including 6 million Jews were slaughtered.
Refurbished after Germany’s 1990 reunification by British architect Norman Foster, who added an iconic glass dome to symbolize open democracy, it houses the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.
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