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The Bad Blue Boys fan group’s banner at Dinamo Zagreb’s stadium. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Bjz.

N1 TV reported on Thursday that the public prosecutor’s office in Salzburg has filed an indictment against 14 people for glorifying the Croatian World War II fascist Ustasa regime.

According to the daily newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten, which initially reported the news on Tuesday, the prosecutor’s office indicted 14 men who consider themselves to be part of the Bad Blue Boys, a well-known Dinamo Zagreb fan group.

The men are between 22 and 37 years old and are resident in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Ten of them have Croatian passports.

They were indicted them for an incident in June 2015, when they gathered in a house in the town of Hallein, near Salzburg, where they “glorified and referred to the Ustasa movement as positive”, while doing Nazi salutes.

In videos and photographs that the prosecution has obtained, the men can be seen singing Ustasa songs.

They are also charged with doing Nazi salutes in the streets of Salzburg.

While searching their homes, police found materials glorifying the Ustasa and Nazism.

The men have denied the charges, which were brought under an Austrian law banning National Socialism.

Prosecutor’s office spokesperson Barbara Fischer told Salzburger Nachrichtenthat “the Ustasa dictatorship was in its core a copy, an imitation of Hitler’s Third Reich”, which also introduced racist laws and put thousands in concentration camps.

A Salzburg court will now decide on whether to confirm the indictment and send the case for trial.

Croatian football has a history of Nazi-related incidents.

At a national team match with Norway in March 2015, supporters at the Maksimir stadium in Zagreb chanted “Za dom spremni” (“Ready for the home(land)”) – a slogan used by the Ustasa.

The same slogan was shouted by Croatian player Josip Simunic after a game with Iceland in November 2013, which led to his suspension for the World Cup in Brazil.

Croatian fans displayed another swastika flag in the stands in at a European qualifier against Georgia in Split in June 2011.

They also simulated a swastika with their bodies in the stands at a stadium in Livorno in Italy in August 2006.

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