BERLIN — A distinguished determine within the far-right Alternative for Germany get together has been charged over his alleged use in a 2021 speech of a slogan utilized by the Nazis’ SA stormtroopers, German prosecutors mentioned Monday.

Prosecutors within the jap metropolis of Halle mentioned that Björn Höcke was charged with public use of an emblem of an unconstitutional group. Höcke, an influential determine on the arduous proper of Alternative for Germany, heads his get together’s department within the neighboring jap state of Thuringia.

Höcke is accused of ending a speech to some 250 individuals in Merseburg in May 2021 with the phrases “Everything for Germany!”

Prosecutors cost that he was conscious of the origin of the phrase as an SA slogan. In an announcement, they mentioned Höcke’s legal professionals had denied that his phrases had any “criminal relevance.”

Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has come beneath rising scrutiny from Germany’s home intelligence company, which has positioned its Thuringia department beneath formal statement.

Höcke has up to now espoused revisionist views of Germany’s Nazi previous. In 2018, he referred to as the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame” and referred to as for Germany to carry out a “180-degree turn” with regards to the way in which it remembers its previous. A celebration tribunal on the time rejected a bid to have him expelled.

The expenses towards Höcke come as Germany’s mainstream events are buying and selling blame for polls displaying help for AfD reaching a document excessive.

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