Germans Alarmed At Neo-Nazis
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Wednesday announced he will support moves to ban a far-right political party after a court in Halle convicted three Neo-nazis of murder for kicking a Mozambican immigrant to death just because he was black.
The June slaying of 39-year-old Alberto Adriano was one of three blamed this year on extreme-right attacks in Germany. Dozens of killings have been attributed to extremist groups since reunification in 1990, reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey.
Enrico Hilprecht, 24, was sentenced to the maximum of life in prison for the brutal crime. His two 16-year-old co-defendants, Christian Richter and Frank Miethbauer, were each given sentences of nine years—one year less than the maximum allowed for juveniles.
Prosecutors had sought the maximum sentences for all three, charging they had acted solely out of hatred for foreigners when they went after Adriano.
The defense had pleaded for shorter jail terms, saying prosecutors had failed to prove that the attackers intended to kill Adriano when they attacked him in a park in the east German city of Dessau.
Reading the verdict, Judge Albrecht Hennig said that the court came to the conclusion that the three killed Adriano solely because of the color of his skin.
The judge said the killers acted "worse than animals."
The defendants looked stone-faced as the verdict and sentencing was read. Richter, who had grinned at one point during the reading of the indictment last week, briefly appeared to blink away tears.
Defense lawyer Sabine Grunow said all of the accused expressed regret in brief closing statements Friday after the four-day trial, which was closed to the public because it involved juveniles.
Adriano's widow, Angelika, was not in court for the verdict. She decided to stay away after receiving death threats, said Razak Minhel, a liaison with the foreigner community in Dessau, where she lives with the couple's three children.
"She simply is afraid," he said.
Dessau police said that they have increased patrols around their home. She moved last weekend to a location being kept secret.
Adriano came to then-East Germany from Mozambique in the 1980s under a socialist worker exchange program and remained after unification, working in a meatpacking plant.
On June 11, he was walking home when the three attacked him to shouts of racist abuse, then stripped him after he stopped moving. He died three days later, leaving behind his wife and three young sons.
The extreme right wing is small but growing, especially in the impoverished former East Germany, where disaffected youth have been taking out their frustration on immigrants.
Some asylum seekers say they live in fear.
"I would never work at nighttime, no. If I have to work then I have to take machine gun or pistol or like that," said one man.
The wave of violence that has prompted outrage and dismay among political leaders.
Schroedr has made the fight against neo-Nazi violence one of the focal points of his two-week tour through the depressed former communist eastern states, where recent attacks on foreigners have been concentrated.
He has said that given Germany's history, it needs to be especially sensitive to issues like racism.
In a television interview Wednesday, he reiterated his call for a "triad" approach: toughness by police and the courts against perpetrators, better employment and training prospects for the "young hangers-on" to pull them out of the neo-Nazi scene, and "societal engagement…to stand up for what's right."
"This is not just an east German problem, even if there are also especially dangerous characteristics that have to be fought decisively," he said on ARD television.
Indeed, two supporters of the guilty men were arrested Wednesday after proclaiming that the crime "wasn't all that bad." Another skinhead, asked if he cared that a man had been killed, answered simply, "No."
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