Vienna court gives hooligan suspended sentence over Nazi symbols

ORF reports that a supporter of the far-right hooligan group Unsterblich has been sentenced to 20 months in prison, suspended for three years, for violations of Austria’s Prohibition Act. The ruling by a regional court is not legally binding.

The 25-year-old was accused of appearing at away matches involving Vienna Austria between 2021 and 2023 wearing a leather vest displaying Nazi-related symbols.

Investigators also found extensive material during a raid in September 2023, including stickers bearing the slogans “One people, one Reich, one leader” and “HH”, a code for “Heil Hitler”. They also found a T-shirt showing a white shark with the slogan “White Power”. Hundreds of related memes and files were found on the defendant’s mobile phone, including 45 division insignia from the Nazi era.

The defendant pleaded not guilty. The bricklayer said he had received the vest but did not know what its symbols meant. He said the letter H on the stickers was a stylised, old English H that people in the hooligan scene recognised as a “hooligan H”. He also said the flags on the vest were modelled on flags from other countries.

He claimed the files on his phone had been synchronised into his photo gallery through chat groups and that he had never looked at them. He said he had received the T-shirt but had never worn it.

The prosecutor rejected the explanations as a defence claim. She argued that the symbols were used to glorify the Nazi era and said she was convinced the defendant knew this. The judge also questioned the explanation that the T-shirt referred to support for white sharks and described the material on the phone as unusual.

Defence lawyer David Jodlbauer said his client was “at most a hooligan who had mixed with right-wing extremists”. He argued that the defendant was not a member of Unsterblich and did not necessarily know what the symbols on the vest represented.

The court cited the defendant’s previously clean record, his relatively young age when some of the offences were committed and the lengthy proceedings as mitigating factors. The defendant accepted the sentence, while the prosecution made no statement. The ruling is therefore not legally binding.

The case followed years of investigations by Austria’s Directorate for State Security and Intelligence into Unsterblich Vienna. Members of the group had repeatedly appeared in public wearing leather vests with stylised Nazi symbols since November 2021.

Unsterblich Vienna is a former fan club of Vienna Austria. The club withdrew the group’s fan-club status and expelled it in 2013, while all known members and supporters were given bans from its premises. Several members currently face stadium bans across Austria.