Man arrested for posting video of him training dog to give Nazi salute

A Scottish man found himself in hot water for posting a video of him training a dog to give a Nazi salute. He was eventually charged with committing a hate crime.

"My girlfriend is always ranting and raving about how cute and adorable her wee dog is so I thought I would turn him into the least cute thing I could think of, which is a Nazi," Mark Meechan reportedly said in the video.

In the video posted in April 2016, a pug named Buddha is seen lifting his paws when he hears the "Sieg Heil" command in the video, according to The Telegraph. 29-year-old Meechan, from Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire also recorded the pug responding to statements such as "gas the Jews". The video has been seen more than a million times.

Some viewers filed a complaint over the content which led to Meechan's arrest for allegedly committing a hate crime over the uploaded video "M8 Yer Dugs a Nazi".

In the hate crime trial at Airdrie Sheriff Court, Ephraim Borowski, director of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC), condemned the clip and spoke of how it is grossly offensive". Borowski himself lost family members to the Nazis.

"My immediate reaction is that there is a clear distinction to be made between an off-hand remark and the amount of effort that is required to train a dog like that, I actually feel sorry for the dog," Borowski told the court, The Telegraph reported. Adding, "In many ways, the bit I found most offensive was the repetition of 'gas the Jews' rather than the dog itself.”

"I'm no historian, but it is the marching signal of the Nazi storm troopers who contributed and supported the murder of six million Jews including members of my own family and I take this all slightly personally," he went on to state.

Mark Meechan has denied any wrongdoing and insists he only made the video to annoy his 29-year-old girlfriend Suzanne Kelly. The trial is currently ongoing.