Austrian far-right lawmakers win defamation case against newspaper over hymn

VIENNA (Reuters) - Three Austrian lawmakers from the far-right Freedom Party won a defamation case against newspaper Der Standard on Thursday over an article that said they attended a funeral where a Nazi song was sung, when in fact it could not be determined if it was.

Der Standard published a video from the funeral in Vienna in September of a 90-year-old member of a right-wing fraternity, including a song sung there that the paper described as an SS hymn while explaining it was originally from the 19th century and SS troops sang a version with slightly different lyrics.

The SS, or "Schutzstaffel," was the main paramilitary force of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, and, among its many roles, took a leading part in the Holocaust, the slaughter of 6 million Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis.

The newspaper reported that Freedom Party (FPO) parliamentary candidate Norbert Nemeth, since elected to the lower house in September, and FPO lawmakers Martin Graf and Harald Stefan attended the funeral and did not leave when the song was sung.

The men brought a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper, arguing that the hymn sung was not a Nazi song.

The Vienna criminal court that heard the case, however, found on Thursday that the audio of the recording was too poor to tell which version of the song was sung, and awarded the three plaintiffs 20,250 euros ($20,853) in damages in total, Austrian media that attended the trial, including Der Standard, reported.

"The first-instance ruling ... is a bitter defeat for the daily newspaper Der Standard since it was symbolically beaten to death by its own Nazi club," FPO co-Secretary-General Christian Hafenecker said in a statement welcoming the ruling.

Der Standard quoted its lawyer as saying it would appeal the ruling.

The eurosceptic, Russia-friendly FPO was founded in the 1950s under a leader who had been a senior SS officer and Nazi lawmaker but it now denies any link to Nazism, saying it has turned its back on its antisemitic past.

The organisation that formally represents Austria's Jews, however, refuses to deal with the FPO and says it still has many "basement Nazis" in its ranks.

The FPO won September's parliamentary election with around 29% of the vote and, after a centrist attempt to form a ruling coalition without the FPO failed, it was tasked last week with forming a government. It is in coalition talks with the conservative People's Party.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna; Editing by Matthew Lewis)