NEO-NAZIS DETAINED FOR FOUNDING 'HITLER YOUTH' (Italy)

11/11/2009- Seventeen young Italian men were detained by police Italian man in the northern city of Bolzano on Wednesday for allegedly founding a neo-Nazi group called the "Hitler Youth of Naturno" or "Naturns Hitlerjugend". Nine of the group who were detained were under the age of 18 and one was as young as 16 years-old, Italian media reports said. Police claimed to have discovered considerable online neo-Nazi propaganda during raids, and said the group had made a video showing some members throwing a Molotov cocktail and beating up another man. Naturno is a small commune of 5,500 people in the northern region of Trentino Alto-Adige, where a majority of people speak German as their mother tongue. In late 2007, a group of neo-Nazis from Bolzano travelled to the German concentration camp of Dachau where they posed for photos giving the Nazi salute. At the time, Italian authorities said the strength of the neo-Nazi movement had been underestimated, adding that there were at least five neo-Nazi organisations operating in Alto-Adige. The Mancini law introduced in 1993 provides for the prosecution of individuals who incite violence for a broad range of hate crimes. Many of those arrested in 2007 received conditional jail sentences and were later freed. The Trentino Alto-Adige region is an autonomous region in northern Italy. It used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until its annexation by Italy in 1919. Despite separatist tensions in the 1960s, it has remained a peaceful area.
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