German white supremacist sentenced to life for ‘inhuman’ synagogue attack
MAGDEBURG, Germany — A white supremacist who livestreamed his efforts to blast his way into a synagogue in Germany last year on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, failing to cause widespread bloodshed only because he could not breach a heavy wooden door, was sentenced Monday to life in prison.
Two people were killed outside the synagogue in Halle, in eastern Germany, during the attack on Oct. 9, 2019. In convicting the assailant of murder and attempted murder, the presiding judge, Ursula Mertens, said the effort to kill the 51 people inside as they observed Yom Kippur was “despicable, cowardly and inhuman.”
The attacker, Stephan Balliet, a 28-year-old German nationalist, stood motionless as the judge read the sentence. He had confessed to the attack, some of which he had filmed with a camera and streamed live over the internet.
Although the streamed assault attracted little attention at the time, downloads of it have since been widely shared among like-minded individuals on the far right, an expert witness told the court.
That was the ultimate goal of the defendant, who had also hoped to use the trial as an opportunity to expound on his hatred for Jews, Muslims, women and others whom he viewed as a threat to himself and to white German society, the judge said.
One person who was wounded, an immigrant from Tunisia, was targeted “in a cowardly, perfidious way, based on his appearance,” the judge said.
Throughout the five months of the trial, Judge Mertens sought to rein in the defendant, intervening when he made disparaging remarks or denied the existence of the Holocaust. In reading the court’s findings, the judge repeatedly made clear her disdain, pointing out when his victims had been productive members of society who had held down jobs — “unlike the defendant,” she added.
In the video, which was presented as evidence to the court, the attacker could be seen killing a 40-year-old woman who spoke to him while he tried to storm the synagogue. After failing to achieve his initial target, the attacker went to a nearby kebab shop, where he killed a 20-year-old German man, whom he believed to be a Muslim. In testimony, he told the court he considered himself “a failure,” because he had only succeeded in killing Germans.
The court followed federal prosecutors’ arguments that he should receive the maximum sentence possible for carrying out what one prosecutor, Kai Lohse, called the
country’s “most despicable act of anti-Semitism since World War II.”
Mr. Balliet will not be eligible for parole, guaranteeing that he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
“You showed no indication of remorse. On the contrary, you repeatedly made clear that you wanted to continue your fight,” the judge said, explaining the decision for the severity of the sentence. “Consequently, we have decided that society must be protected from you.”
At a time when Germany is struggling to come to terms with the extent of farright extremism within the ranks of its own security services and police, the trial revealed how little its highestlevel investigators know about the darkest corners of the digital sphere where white terrorists gather and plot violence.
“Luckily, none of the visitors of the synagogue suffered physical injuries,” the judge said, in detailing the reasons for her ruling. She noted the danger posed to society by the attacker because of his anti-Semitic, racist and misogynist views, along with the arsenal of weapons he loaded into the car that he drove into the city.
“He put 51 people in danger because he knowingly planned this location and time” to carry out the attack, she said. “Therefore there remains no question about a sentence of life.”
Survivors of the attack, many of them younger Jews who had traveled to Halle to observe Yom Kippur with the local community, were among the 45 co-plaintiffs who took part in the trial. Many used their participation, which allowed them to question witnesses and the defendant, to prevent him from using the proceedings to promote his far-right ideology.
Much in the same way that dozens of women who were abused by Larry Nassar, a former team doctor for the United States national gymnastics team, used his trial in a Michigan court in 2018 to break the silence about sexual abuse, the younger Jews used their opportunity to speak in the courtroom to challenge Germans to confront the threat posed by persistent antiSemitism and racism.
“None of the hate-filled conspiracies that this man has voiced are new,” Talya Feldman, who survived the attack on the synagogue, said in her closing statement this month. “We’ve heard them all before. And we know where they lead. We know what happens when this propaganda and this speech goes unchecked. Germany knows it. I know it.”
During questioning from the co-plaintiffs, investigators from the Federal Criminal Office acknowledged they did not understand how international networks of white supremacists operated.