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CRIME

Far-right ‘terror’ group faces verdicts for attacks targeting refugees

Eight members of a German far-right group face verdicts on Wednesday after a year-long terrorism trial over a series of explosives attacks targeting refugees and anti-fascist activists.

Published: 7 March 2018 09:06 CET
Far-right 'terror' group faces verdicts for attacks targeting refugees
The trial with the eight members of the far-right terror group in Dresden in June. Photo: DPA

Based in Germany's ex-communist east, the so-called “Freital group” had sought to create “a climate of fear” at the height of Germany's refugee and migrant influx in 2015, prosecutors say.

The seven men and one woman, now aged between 20 and 40, modified pyrotechnics they had bought in the neighbouring Czech Republic for five explosives attacks.

One Syrian refugee was injured in a blast, and prosecutors charge that the group had casually accepted the risk of more victims and possible deaths in their attacks.

If they are found guilty of forming a terrorist group, attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm, prosecutors have demanded prison sentences of five to 11 years.

Chief justice Thomas Fresemann was due to announce the verdicts and sentences at 1200 GMT.

Defence lawyers have not disputed the attacks but reject the charge that they constitute terrorism or attempted murder, arguing instead that the bombings were “spontaneous”.

The Freital group is named after the members' hometown, which drew notoriety beyond German borders in 2015 when enraged protesters there railed against “criminal foreigners” and “asylum-seeking pigs”.

Nearby Dresden, capital of the eastern state of Saxony, was the birthplace of the anti-Islamic street movement Pegida, which has ties with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) that has since entered Germany's parliament.

SEE ALSO: Examining why right-wing extremism plagues east Germany

Racist ideology

The trial has been held under tight security in a temporary courtroom complex with on-site holding cells located in a former refugee accommodation centre on the outskirts of Dresden.

In the dock are the two suspected ringleaders — Patrick Festing, a pizza delivery and warehouse worker, and bus driver Timo Schulz — as well as five more men and one woman, Maria Kleinert.

Prosecutors say they staged five attacks with explosives between July and November 2015 — two on Freital refugee homes, two on an office and a car of far-left Die Linke politicians, and one on a Dresden communal residential complex.

 A Syrian refugee suffered “multiple cuts” to the face when three explosive devices were hurled through the windows of a refugee housing centre on the night of October 31st.

On the final day of hearings in February, Festing apologized to the victims without however clearly distancing himself from far-right and racist ideology, reported regional newspaper Sächsische Zeitung.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I can't explain why I did it.”

Schulz, who did not address the court, was previously handed a one-year suspended jail sentence for a baseball bat attack on the car of pro-refugee activists.

Kleinert said she too had suffered discrimination for being a lesbian and told the court: “I wish I could answer the question of why, because I, too, despise discrimination and exclusion.”

CRIME

Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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