French police investigate British MP's Nazi-themed stag party

French police have interviewed staff at a restaurant in the French Alpine resort of Val Thorens which hosted a party attended by a British member of parliament during which some guests toasted the Third Reich. It is a criminal offence in France to wear Nazi regalia or to defend or deny the holocaust. 

Flickr/Altogetherfool

The MP, Aidan Burley of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party, was among a group of men, one of them wearing an SS uniform, who were filmed by reporters at a party where Nazi chants and salutes were made.

Burley has apologised for attending the event at the La Fondue restaurant and insists that he himself did not take part in Nazi-themed revelry, although he has been sacked as a junior parliamentary aide.

The local French state prosecutor's office told the French news agency that staff had been interviewed as witnesses and that clients from other tables on the night of 3 December were being sought.

"Either we could open a prosecution in France or we could make a complaint to British judicial authorities for them to take a decision on whether to open an inquiry there," an official said.

Reporters from the British newspaper The Daily Mail secretly filmed the stag party with footage showing the groom-to-be wearing the uniform of the World War II Nazi SS, and later posing for a photograph for the reporters while giving a Nazi salute.

On Thursday, Burley said in a statement: "I have not been contacted by the French authorities and I have repeatedly apologised for what was clearly inappropriate behaviour which caused offence to others.”