- guardian.co.uk, Friday August 18 2000 01.48 BST
Police broke up a torchlit procession by some 60 neo-Nazis late on Wednesday in the east German port of Rostock. Three of the marchers were charged with displaying symbols with banned racist or Nazi content.
Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, committed suicide in Spandau prison, Berlin, in 1987. He continues to exert a fascination for Germany's small band of neo-Nazis, who believe (as does his family) that he was murdered by his British military captors.
Posters and leaflets were found in Rostock and towns across the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Police detained a 14-year-old youth caught in possession of 1,200 Hess stickers in the eastern town of Jena.
Police also confiscated small numbers of similar posters in Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Lower Saxony states in the former West Germany, generally perceived to have less of a problem with the far right than the east.
No incidents were reported at his grave in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel.
On Wednesday, a Berlin court upheld a decision by city officials to reject a request by a neo-Nazi for permission to stage a march on Saturday to mark Hess's death.
The court said that such a march would be "unbearable" for the general public in the light of recent violence against foreigners.
