COTTBUS (AFP)---A notorious German neo-Nazi was sentenced to six months in jail on Friday for giving the Hitler salute when reporting to prison to serve an earlier sentence.
The court in Cottbus, eastern Germany, gave Horst Mahler, a 71-year-old lawyer with a record of crimes linked to both the far-left and far-right movements, one week to appeal to the sentence.
Mahler admitted to giving the Hitler salute in November 2006 when he arrived at a jail in Cottbus to serve another sentence.
He has six previous convictions for political crimes, including denying the Holocaust and giving the Hitler salute.
In 2002, he was fined for praising the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States as "eminently efficient and therefore right".
Mahler was a co-founder of the extreme left-wing Red Army Faction guerrilla group that led a bloody campaign against the West German government.
He later swung to the extreme-right and became the lawyer for Germany’s neo-Nazi National Democratic Party.
He has been barred from practising law because of his criminal record.