The court found Stephan Ernst, 47, guilty of the 2019 murder of Walter Lübcke, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right party who had defended her welcoming refugee policy. The prosecutor, Dieter Killmer, insisted that the court must send a message to an increasingly emboldened far-right camp in the country. Lübcke was killed on the terrace of his home near the central German city of Kassel on June 2, 2019. Ernst was arrested two weeks later, and confessed to the crime shortly afterward, only to rescind that confession weeks later. Following Lübcke’s murder, Germany witnessed a string of far-right attacks, beginning with the attempted bombing of a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, in October 2019.

Source: bd News24 January 28, 2021 17:26 UTC