A German court has handed down a life sentence to a neo-Nazi inspired by Australian Brenton Tarrant for a deadly attack last year that nearly became the country’s worst anti-Semitic atrocity since World War II.
A bolted door at the synagogue in the eastern city of Halle with 52 worshippers inside marking Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, was the only thing that prevented the heavily armed attacker from carrying out a planned bloodbath.
After failing to storm the temple on October 9, 2019, Stephan Balliet, 28, shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop.
“Without that famous reinforced door, he would have committed a massacre,” presiding judge Ursula Mertens said as she read out the verdict on Monday night.
Condemning an “odious, cowardly and inhuman act”, Judge Mertens said it had been clear that the accused had “anti-Semitic, racist and misogynist motives”.
“You are dangerous for humanity,” she told Balliet as he listened impassively, dressed in black and with his head shaven.
During his five-month trial, Balliet denied the Holocaust in open court — a crime in Germany — and expressed no remorse over those targeted, many of whom were co-plaintiffs in the case.
He was convicted of two counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in a case that deeply rattled the country and fuelled fears about rising right-wing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, 75 years after the end of the Nazi era.
Read the article by David Courbet in The Australian.