German police said Tuesday they had made an arrest following videos showing Lazio fans making Nazi salutes in Munich ahead of the Italian team's Champions League match against Bayern.
Police confirmed to AFP that an 18-year-old Italian had been “found and provisionally arrested” for saluting.
On amateur videos sent to AFP and recorded around 10:30 p.m. Monday in the brewery, we see several dozen supporters in Lazio Rome tracksuits in the Hofbräuhaus - the Munich brewery where Adolf Hitler had the Nazi party's program adopted - giving Nazi or fascist salutes, and chanting “Duce,” in reference to former Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Police later confirmed that the Italian fan had been released after posting bail.
In a video published on the Instagram account of the Italian daily La Repubblica, we also see Lazio supporters singing: “We don't care about prison, the Black Shirts will triumph.
If they do not triumph, it will be a mess with batons and grenades.
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The Blackshirts refer to the militia of Mussolini's regime.
“These images are shameful, they tarnish the image of the club, of all its supporters and of Rome,” lamented Alessandro Onorato, the deputy in charge of Sports at Rome town hall, in a press release.
In recent years, Lazio supporters have regularly been singled out for racist or anti-Semitic behavior.
In 2017, they notably distinguished themselves by hijacking an image of Anne Frank, a German Jewish teenager who died in the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany, which they had displayed wearing the AS Roma jersey.
Founded at the end of the 16th century, the Hofbräuhaus is a Munich brewery, where Adolf Hitler presented in February 1920 the 25 points of the program of the Nazi party NSDAP.