90-year-old Vera Oredsson has had her conviction for making a Hitler salute in Sweden overturned after appealing that she was simply waving.
Ms Oredsson, who was born in Nazi Germany and whose father served with Hitler’s infamous stormtroopers, was initially convicted in February 2018 following the release of a picture that appeared to show her giving the salute at a Nordic Resistance Movement event in May 2016 in Borlänge, SVT reports.
The verdict was appealed in March last year with Oredsson having claimed she was waving at counter-protestors dressed as clowns in the picture rather than giving the salute.
That appeal was granted by the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm with the judge saying that “even if the gesture in its context can be considered troublesome,” the court could not conclude the gesture was the Hitler salute based on a single photograph.
The neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) has seen some level of growth since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 and has seen several marches in Stockholm and other cities around Sweden.
In 2017, members of the Jewish community in Gothenburg attempted to have police cancel one of the group’s marches which was to take place on Yom Kippur.
The march ended up going ahead and saw around 50 people detained and several injured including a police officer.
Allan Stutzinsky, chairman of the Gothenburg Jewish community, condemned the NMR march but also criticised alt-left extremist counter-protesters, saying they may also pose a threat to Jews in the area.
Anti-Semitism in Sweden has also been seen to come from some Muslim migrants living in the country.
For example, in reaction to President Donald Trump moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a synagogue in Gothenburg was attacked, with Syrian and Palestinian migrants being arrested shortly after the attack.
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