crime
Second perpetrator sentenced: eleven years in prison for acid attack
The second perpetrator was sentenced to a long prison term for the acid attack on Bernhard Günther. photo
© Henning Kaiser/dpa
Almost six years ago, two men ambushed top manager Bernhard Günter when he came home from jogging on Sunday and went home with fresh rolls. They threw sulfuric acid in his face.
Both assassins wanted Günther to go blind, that was clear, said presiding judge Klaus Blume. Both of them knew each other from a brothel. When a cell phone was evaluated, a deleted chat between the two men was able to be restored; The 37-year-old amateur wrestler also exhibited unusual behavior and deleted his cell phone number two days after the crime. The judge admitted that the person behind the attack was still unknown.
“We are happy about the clear conviction,” said Günther after the trial ended. “Our journey is not over yet. We are continuing to do everything we can to be able to name the people behind it and the client. So far we have been correct with our hypothesis that the client comes from my professional environment. This one and the previous one have that Procedure confirmed.”
Ambushed during the Sunday jogging session
An attack was carried out on Günther on March 4, 2018: two men ambushed the manager near his private home in Haan near Düsseldorf and doused him with highly concentrated sulfuric acid. Günther had just come from his Sunday jogging session and had fresh rolls with him after a stop at the bakery.
The now 57-year-old manager was seriously injured. Eyelids and parts of his facial skin had to be transplanted. He had to undergo numerous operations and was at risk of going blind at times.
At the time, the manager was the head of finance at the energy company Innogy, which was taken over by the Eon Group a few days later. Today he is a manager at the Finnish energy supplier Fortum with more than 19,000 employees.
A perpetrator with a Belgian passport was sentenced to twelve years in prison for the cruel attack in 2022. The punishment is now legally binding. The man convicted in the first instance is said to be his accomplice, the second man at the crime scene.
His defenders expressed doubts as to whether the manager had actually recognized the amateur wrestler from photos. First, private detectives showed him photos of the man. That’s why he was already influenced when he later submitted his photo to the police. There Günter had to recognize the man among various others.
Court rejected alibi
An anonymous whistleblower who received a reward of almost 200,000 euros helped the investigation achieve a breakthrough. The defenders criticized that it was clearly only about the money. Günther’s statements were also not consistent.
The court rejected the defense’s requests for evidence to prove that the 37-year-old was in Belgrade at the time of the crime. The defense attorneys only presented the alleged alibi shortly before the end of the taking of evidence.
Günther’s stated goal is to identify the person who commissioned the attack. He suspects a professional plot behind the attack: a rival wanted to eliminate him in a fight for his career.