Shouting "The fight will go on!" American neo-Nazi Gary Lauck was convicted Thursday of illegally distributing hate propaganda in Germany and sentenced to four years in prison.
The Hamburg state court found Lauck guilty on charges of inciting racial hatred and distributing propaganda of organizations that violate the German constitution. Lauck's lawyer said he would appeal.Lauck, 43, an admitted admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi ideology, prints his publications in the United States and mails them to neo-Nazis abroad, including Germany, from his base in Lincoln, Neb.
Lauck's attorney Hans-Otto Sieg said his client's actions were legal under U.S. constitutional guarantees of free speech and he should be acquitted.
German prosecutors had sought a five-year prison term. The prison time Lauck has served since his March 1995 arrest was deducted from the sentence.
Lauck, who never spoke in his own defense during the three-month trial, railed against the verdict before being led out of the courtroom back to his Hamburg jail cell.
"Neither the communists nor the Nazis ever dared to kidnap an American citizen!" he shouted in German. "The fight will go on!"
Explaining the verdict, presiding judge Guenter Bertram told the court Germany must remain vigilant against neo-Nazi propaganda.
Lauck "would like to be the world's greatest Nazi propagandist and the Fuehrer's most glowing follower," he said.