MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A self-proclaimed Nazi became the first person in Australia to be sentenced to prison for performing an illegal salute when a magistrate on Friday ordered him to spend a month behind bars.

Jacob Hersant, 25, is also the first person in Victoria to be convicted of performing the Nazi salute. The gesture was banned nationwide since he committed the offense.

He was convicted last month in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court of performing the outstretched arm salute in front of news cameras outside Victoria County Court on October 27, 2023. Hersant had then just avoided a prison sentence. prison for causing violent disorder. The Nazi salute had been banned by the state parliament days earlier.

Magistrate Brett Sonnet allowed Hersant to remain on bail following his conviction until Friday, when he was sentenced to a month in prison.

But Hersant spent only an hour in custody before his lawyer, Tim Smartt, won his request for bail after appealing his conviction and sentence.

Hersant faces a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison plus a fine of 24,000 Australian dollars ($16,025).

Smartt said Hersant should not be imprisoned for a nonviolent act.

“It is not justified to send a 25-year-old to prison. This is false,” Smartt told the magistrate.

Sonnet said a prison sentence was appropriate.

“If there had been physical violence, I would have imposed a sentence close to the maximum sentence,” Sonnet said. “The accused sought to promote Nazi ideology in the public square and the court is satisfied that he took advantage of the media to disseminate extreme political views.”

Hersant was a member of the National Socialist Network, an organization that promotes white supremacy, the deportation of immigrants and far-right actors, Sonnet said.

At the salute last year, he praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and said: “Australia for the white man.”

Sonnet said his comments were “clearly racist and sought to promote white supremacy in Australia”.

“To put it bluntly, the white man is not superior to any other human race,” Sonnet said.

Hersant’s lawyers had argued that his comments and greeting were protected by an implied constitutional freedom of political communication.

During his court appearance Friday, Hersant said he had the right to express his political views.

“We are going to argue that the law is constitutionally invalid and that it is emotional and anti-white,” Hersant told reporters. “That’s my political view and I think it’s a good fight for us to argue in court that these laws are invalid.”

Three men were convicted in June of saluting at a football match in Sydney. Three other men were convicted last month for making the gesture outside the Sydney Jewish Museum. All were punished with fines.

Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich, a leading opponent of anti-Semitism in Australia, said Hersant’s prison sentence should serve as a reminder to Nazi sympathizers that Australia shows “no mercy to those who bring symbols of terror to our streets.”

“This is not just a phrase, it is a national cry that symbols of Nazism have no place on our soil,” Abramovich told reporters outside the court.

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