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NATO troops in Lithuania
Photo: INTS KALNINS / REUTERS
Around seven months after an incident involving allegedly inciting and anti-Semitic slogans at a Bundeswehr unit in Lithuania became known, the public prosecutor's office in Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, opened investigations against three soldiers.
As the authority announced on Wednesday, two men are accused of sedition.
The third soldier is accused of suppressing complaints.
He is also said to have treated subordinates "unworthy" in an unrelated case.
Soldiers are said to have started singing anti-Semitic songs
The case is about incidents at a celebration of soldiers from a Bundeswehr unit on a NATO mission in Lithuania in April last year.
The process became public in June and triggered internal investigations by the Bundeswehr.
The affected train was immediately relieved and ordered back to Germany.
According to the public prosecutor's office, two soldiers are charged with incitement to hatred.
Both are said to have expressed xenophobia, one also denied the Holocaust and expressed anti-Semitism.
Several soldiers are said to have started singing anti-Semitic songs at the party.
According to the authority, there was no sufficient suspicion of a crime in the case of other allegations.
This concerned, for example, a case of alleged sexual assault during the celebration.
The "Enhanced Forward Presence" (eFP) mission in Lithuania is part of NATO's deterrence against Russia.
Since 2017, several hundred German soldiers have been training local units in Lithuania and conducting joint exercises so that they can be deployed as quickly as possible in an emergency.
The soldiers belonged to an army unit based in Munster, Lower Saxony.
Therefore, the public prosecutor's office in Lüneburg is responsible.
The incident caused quite a stir last year.
The Federal Ministry of Defense then announced that it intended to release all the main suspects from the Bundeswehr without notice if the relevant requirements were met.
muk/AFP
