VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian prosecutors are investigating young soldiers seen exchanging Hitler salutes in a video that appeared on the Internet, Defense Minister Norbert Darabos said on Tuesday.
In a statement, Darabos said suspects had been tracked down and were being questioned over the incident in an army barracks in Salzburg, captured by a mobile-phone camera and posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube.
Any display of Nazi propaganda or symbols is a crime in Austria, which took decades to acknowledge it was more a willing party than a victim of Nazi Germany's Third Reich.
In the video shown on YouTube before being removed, a young man in army uniform marches by and stretches out his right arm in a Hitler salute. A second, shaven-headed soldier does the same, shouting: "Heil Hitler!"
"There is zero tolerance for such actions. Those involved will have to answer to the army and the law and take the consequences," said Darabos, a Social Democrat. State prosecutors had launched an investigation at his request.
Austrian news agency APA quoted Colonel Gerhard Funk at the Salzburg barracks as saying the two soldiers had been interrogated and two others seen in the video watching the spectacle would be questioned as well.
The incident came to light during a visit by Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer to Israel.
Such Nazi-style acts are punishable in the Alpine republic by up to 10 years in prison.
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