Frankfurt district court
Almost six years in prison in the process of “NSU 2.0” threatening letter
The accused stands between his lawyers
© Andreas Arnold / dpa pool / DPA
The accused spread fear of death with threats and racist abuse. Now the Frankfurt regional court has passed a verdict against the 54-year-old after a lengthy process.
In the Frankfurt trial about the “NSU 2.0” threatening letter, the accused was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison. According to the judges, Alexander M., who comes from Berlin, had sent a series of hateful and racist threatening letters to lawyers, politicians, journalists and representatives of public life by e-mail, fax or SMS.
The Frankfurt district court found the 54-year-old guilty on Thursday of public incitement to commit crimes, incitement to hatred, disturbance of the public peace, use of anti-constitutional symbols, threats, an assault on a law enforcement officer and insult.
The accused himself had again rejected the allegations on Thursday in his “last word”. The allegations against him were not confirmed in the evidence, said the 54-year-old. He accused the public prosecutor of lies and manipulations that were not a basis for a conviction. The investigative group wanted to use their results “to finish him off at any price” and relieve the police.
Accused in the “NSU 2.0” process: Was “systematically tricked”
As in his plea, the Berlin-born defendant admitted to having been a member of a chat group on the dark web, which is why parts of the threatening letters were found on his computer. However, the members of the group “systematically tricked” him. There is no evidence that he wrote the letter. M. apologized for the membership in his closing remarks. The threats were never serious, he added: “The NSU 2.0 project was just trolling at a high level.”
According to the public prosecutor’s office, M. is the author of a total of 81 threatening letters addressed to lawyers, politicians, journalists and other public figures. The addressees of the threatening letters also included satirist Jan Böhmermann, presenter Maybritt Illner and cabaret artist Idil Baydar. The series began in August 2018 with death threats against the Frankfurt lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz and her family. The letters were signed “NSU 2.0” – an allusion to the right-wing extremist terrorist cell National Socialist Underground (NSU).
Commemoration of attack in Hanau
213 dead since 1990 – the bloody trail of right-wing terror in Germany
Co-plaintiffs are demanding further clarification
The prosecution had called for seven and a half years in prison for, among other things, insult and attempted coercion, disturbance of the public peace and incitement to hatred. According to the public prosecutor’s pleading, M. received the personal and publicly inaccessible data of the recipients from various police stations under false identities.
The defendant had made his own plea and asked for an acquittal.
The joint plaintiffs – the member of the Bundestag Martina Renner (Die Linke) and the Frankfurt lawyer Basay-Yildiz – had demanded further clarification. At least for the first letter, there were doubts that M. was the perpetrator. The defense also criticized the fact that the public prosecutor’s office assumed a single perpetrator and pointed to a police officer from the 1st police station in Frankfurt, whose role in the proceedings had not been sufficiently clarified.
Note: This article has been updated