The Danish army admitted Sunday that a leading figure in Denmark's neo-Nazi party and an admirer of Adolf Hitler is serving in the military unit responsible for protecting the royal family.

Daniel Carlsen, 19, a member of the Danish National-Socialist Movement (DNSB), is part of the royal guard whose duties include protecting the royal palace, a spokesman for Denmark's army chief told AFP, confirming a report in a regional newspaper.

We have freedom of speech in Denmark, one is free to join the army and also be a member of a movement.

Kim Gruenberger

"We have freedom of speech in Denmark, one is free to join the army and also be a member of a movement," said spokesman Kim Gruenberger, when asked if there was a risk in having a neo-Nazi protecting a constitutional monarch, Queen Margrethe.

"He is doing his service, he is in training, and he is not directly protecting the queen, and after four months of service he is expected to return home," Gruenberger said, adding that Carlsen had never mentioned that he belonged to a neo-Nazi party when he signed up for military service.

Unlike other European countries, Denmark tolerates an openly Nazi party. Neo-Nazi Danes regularly hold parades, carrying swatztikas, and claiming a nostalgia for Hitler's Germany. The Nazi party can also present candidates in elections.

Carlsen has said in the past that Hitler was his idol, that he was an enemy of democracy and that he did not believe that the Nazis exterminated the Jews during World War II, according to the daily Stiften d'Aarhus, which broke the story of his royal guard duty.

Carlsen is considered one of the most prominent neo-Nazis in Denmark after the movement's leader, Jonni Hansen, the newspaper added.