Tuesday, September 12, 2006 - BELGRADE, Serbia-A group of neo-Nazis who allegedly were filmed disrupting an anti-fascist gathering last year went on trial Tuesday on charges of inciting hatred and intolerance, a news agency reported.

The 18 young men, members of a neo-Nazi group called Nacionalni Stroj (National Order), face up to eight years in prison if convicted. The trial, in the northern city of Novi Sad, started under heavy police protection and was expected to last for several days, the official Tanjug news agency reported.

They are accused of bursting into a gathering of liberals in November, an incident that raised tensions in Serbia, which is still recovering from a series of wars in the 1990s and takes pride in its anti-fascist past.

A film of the meeting, organized to mark the anniversary of the 1938 "Kristallnacht" in Germany when Nazis attacked Jewish homes and businesses, shows the suspects armed with crowbars and dressed in black, disrupting the meeting and making nationalist and anti-Semitic remarks to participants, according to the indictment. No one was injured.