It was the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history: almost five years ago, a man shot dead eleven people in a synagogue. Now he has been found guilty by a jury.
Almost five years after a deadly attack on a synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh, the shooter has been found guilty of all 63 charges, according to media reports. The jury convicted the 50-year-old, among other things, of hate crimes resulting in death. The right-wing extremist had previously pleaded “guilty” – he now faces the death penalty. In order to determine the level of punishment, the procedure goes into a second part, which could last several weeks.
The man, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and three pistols, stormed the “Tree of Life” synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018, when believers from three congregations were gathering there during the Sabbath. He shot eleven people and wounded two other believers. The attacker also injured several police officers before being shot and arrested. During the attack, the man is said to have shouted anti-Jewish slogans.
Apparently targeted hunting for victims
At the end of May, at the beginning of the trial before a federal court, the public prosecutor’s office accused the man of “methodically” hunting down his victims in the attack. “After entering the synagogue, the defendant started chasing, going from room to room, upstairs and downstairs,” prosecutor Soo Song said, according to US media. He was looking for Jewish believers whom he could kill.
The defense did not deny that the defendant fired the shots. But she argued that he suffered from schizophrenia. In addition, he did not act out of hatred of Jews. Rather, the defense cited as a motive that the man wanted to get a Jewish organization to end its support for immigrants. “His unimaginable, nonsensical, irrational thought was that he could achieve his goal by killing Jews,” lawyer Judy Clarke said, according to US media.
Public prosecutor turned down deal
The sentence will now be decided in the second part of the procedure. The lawyers had suggested to the prosecutor that the accused could confess in exchange for a waiver of the death penalty. However, the prosecution rejected such an agreement.
According to estimates, around six million Jews live in the USA, and there are anti-Semitic attacks again and again. The non-governmental organization Anti-Defamation League registered 3,697 anti-Semitic incidents last year – from harassment to vandalism to physical attacks. This is an increase of 36 percent compared to the previous year and the highest number since statistics began in 1979.