BERLIN – A Frankfurt court convicted a German neo-Nazi for the murder of a local politician and sentenced him to life in prison on Thursday for what the prosecutor called the country’s first political assassination by extreme right-wing extremists since the end of World War II. .
The court found Stephan Ernst, 47, guilty of the 2019 murder of Walter Lübcke, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party who had defended his refugee reception policy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole – the sentence the prosecutor had sought due to the seriousness of the crime, which he argued was motivated by “racism and xenophobia”.
The assassination marked a turning point in postwar Germany’s assessment with the extent of the threat posed by domestic neo-Nazis, after years of attacks by far-right extremists against migrants or their descendants. For the past year, Germany has been struggling with revelations that far-right networks have largely penetrated its security services, including its elite special forces, as well as its police ranks.
The prosecutor, Dieter Killmer, insisted that the court must send a message to an increasingly encouraged far-right camp in the country.
“From our point of view, as soon as a politician is involved, as is the case here, we should all be vigilant to ensure that others do not ignore the state’s monopoly on the use of force and take charge of killing representatives of the German people,” Killmer told reporters last week after his final arguments.
Another man, identified only as Markus H. under German privacy laws, was found not guilty of being an accomplice to the murder, but received a one-and-a-half-year suspended sentence for gun violation.
Lübcke was killed on the terrace of his home near the city of Kassel, in central Germany, on June 2, 2019. His adult son found his father lying in a chair with a gunshot to the head and called an ambulance. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Mr. Ernst was arrested two weeks later and confessed to the crime shortly thereafter, only to terminate the confession weeks later. He reaffirmed his confession during the trial, which began in June.
Mr. Ernst was also charged with attempted murder in the August 2016 stabbing of a refugee from Iraq after police searched Mr. Ernst’s home and found a knife with traces of the Iraqi DNA. He was acquitted of the charge on Thursday.
Mr. Ernst was known to the police as a sympathizer with neo-Nazis and had a criminal record dating back to 1993 when he was convicted of attempting to bomb a refugee shelter. In the years that followed, he escaped the radar of security services, leading to criticism that regional authorities did not take seriously the threat posed by domestic right-wing extremists.
While refugee shelters began to fill again in the fall of 2015 with hundreds of thousands of people seeking asylum in Germany due to conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, Lübcke traveled throughout his region explaining the situation to its constituents.
During a prefecture, he was repeatedly provoked by members of a local far-right group, including Markus H. Striking out criticism, Lübcke said that offering refugees adequate housing was a matter of German and Christian values, and of anyone other than them supported was “free to leave this country.”
Markus H. filmed and posted a video of Lübcke making the statement on social media channels frequented by supporters of the far right, where he generated furious reactions. Months later, Lübcke received a torrent of hate messages, including death threats.
After Lübcke’s assassination, Germany witnessed a series of far-right attacks, beginning with the attempted bombing of a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the most sacred day on the Jewish calendar, in October 2019. Two people were killed.
Last February, a far-right sniper killed nine people from Turkish and Kurdish families who had lived in Germany for generations in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt.