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German court hands student 5-year sentence for attacks on neo-Nazis
The Ay Pee article does not even once say it, but the “student” and her friends are Antifa cadres.
[IsraelTimes] 28-year-old convicted of membership in a criminal organization and serious bodily harm for series of assaults with others over a period of two years

A court in eastern Germany has sentenced a 28-year-old woman to five years and three months in prison for taking part in a series of attacks on neo-Nazi
...adherents of a philosophy that was seen even at the time as pure evil, which makes them either consciously and purely evil, or attention-seeking ratbags. Pick one, or both....
s and other right-wing holy warriors over a period of two years.

German news agency dpa reported Wednesday that the Dresden regional court convicted Lina E., whose surname wasn’t released due to privacy rules, of membership in a criminal organization and serious bodily harm.

Prosecutors accused the student of "militant extreme-left ideology" and conceiving the idea of attacks on far-right individuals in Leipzig and nearby towns. Three men, Lennart A., Jannis R. and Jonathan M., are alleged to have joined up with her by the end of 2019. The men were sentenced to between 27 months and 39 months in prison.

Lina E. has been in jug since her arrest on November 5, 2020. The others have remained free.

Among the attacks Lina E. was accused of helping orchestrate was a 2020 incident in which about 15 or 20 assailants beat a group of six people returning from a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Molotov cocktailing of Dresden. The event regularly attracts neo-Nazis and other far-right sympathizers. Prosecutors said several victims sustained serious injuries after being punched, kicked and hit with batons.

Defense lawyers had called for their clients to be acquitted, claiming the trial was politically motivated.

Far-left groups have announced plans to protest the verdict, prompting police to establish a large presence in Leipzig in anticipation of possible unrest. Leipzig authorities have restricted public gatherings in the city at the weekend.

Germany’s top security official said the case showed authorities won’t accept any forms of political violence. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said federal and state police would act decisively if there is far-left violence in the coming weeks.

The far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has come under scrutiny from security services for its ties to turbans, welcomed the verdict. It accused Lina E. and her co-defendants of "terrorist methods" and lamented that the sentences weren’t longer.
Update from Deutsche Welle at noon ET:
She was sentenced to five years and three months in prison but was later told she would only have to return to jail if she also loses an appeal. Her three male co-defendants were sentenced to around three years in prison each.

The defendants were greeted on Wednesday with a huge round of applause, many of them waving and smiling to friends and relatives in the courtroom in Dresden. When Lina E. herself was brought in, the applause was even louder and longer, with virtually the whole of the gallery, apart from the journalists, standing up.

As soon as the sentence was read, the gallery began chanting leftist messages of support. The judge called for quiet so he could read out his reasoning, saying: "Anyone who is interested in hearing why the verdict was the way it was, can stay." Someone immediately shouted: "Because you're fascist friends!" Others called out: "F***ing class justice!"

LAST-MINUTE REPRIEVE, AT LEAST PENDING APPEAL
The judge immediately called a 15-minute break, during which people who had shouted were to be removed by security.

There were loud groans of protest and tuts of disgust from the gallery throughout the reading of the court's reasoning. The judge said that, even if the political motivations of the defendants, such as fighting right-wing extremism, could be regarded as justified, that did not reduce the severity of their crimes. He also criticized the defense lawyers for describing the trial as "political justice."

The judge also took time to defend the German justice system, mentioning the number of convictions against violent far-right extremists that this court had itself handed down in the past few years. Again, this was greeted with scoffing and sarcastic laughter from the gallery.

However, late on Wednesday evening as the proceedings were drawing to a close, the judge gave the defendants' supporters in the courtroom a reason to cheer instead.

After spending an exhausting day reading the court's entire reasoning (which took upwards of eight hours, including breaks), presiding judge Hans Schlüter-Staats did have one more surprise: By now audibly hoarse after recounting the details of the police investigation in painstaking detail, the judge declared in the evening that Lina E. would be freed until the conviction was upheld.

Provided she gives up her passport and ID and reports to the police twice a week, Lina E. will be allowed to return home until any appeals are exhausted. If she does return to prison, she will have only around three years of her five-year sentence to serve, since she has been in custody since her arrest.

CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE
Much of the prosecution's case rested on the testimony of a member of her group who turned state's witness: thirty-year-old Johannes D., who said before the Dresden Higher Regional Court that the four defendants had trained specifically for attacks on right-wing extremists. But later allegedly said that it was merely a matter of normal martial arts training for physical exercise.

The level of planning was key to the prosecution's case, as the accusation that Lina E. was the leader of a criminal organization rested on arguments that the attacks were specially trained for.

"Free Lina" signs and collection boxes for her defense fund have been put out in the Leipzig district of Connewitz, a left-wing hub where Lina E. herself lived.

But Hendrik Hansen, a specialist in extremism and professor at the Federal University of Applied Administrative Sciences, argues that the media has, if anything, underestimated the dangers of left-wing extremism.

"This trial is a clear success," Hansen told DW. "In the area around Leipzig we are facing the rise of clandestine structures that are very well networked in the left-wing extremist scene, and who are using methods that they have not used before."

Hansen said Lina E.'s group could clearly be classified as a criminal organization, and could well be described as terrorist: "This was a whole group of people planning attacks so minutely that they were using the appropriate technology, like disposable mobile phones. They had scouts, who spied on the victims. The tasks within the group were very precisely divided up."

Hansen said that the evidence showed that the group was not merely planning street-fighting methods, but targeted assaults aimed at seriously injuring or even killing their victims. "Terrorism is defined as using politically motivated violence to spread fear and horror either within the general population or within a certain group of people," he said.

WHO IS LINA E.?
Lina E. was born in Kassel, central Germany, she showed interest in a career as a social worker working with disadvantaged youth, and during her studies wrote about how to deal with far-right radicalization among young people.

Kassel is located in the state of Hesse, which has a large far-right scene, and in 2006 the city was the scene of one of the 10 murders carried out by the right-wing terrorist group the National Socialist Underground (NSU). Lina E. is reported to have become politicized by the uncovering of the NSU in 2011, which caused major controversy and investigations across Germany about law enforcement and intelligence failures.

She has now spent the last two and a half years since her arrest in the same prison in Chemnitz where the only known surviving NSU member, Beate Zschäpe, is also imprisoned.


Posted by: trailing wife 2023-06-01
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=668605