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CRIME

Teenager in Germany found guilty of school attack plot

A teenager was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence in Germany on Friday for planning a deadly attack on a school he attended, a court spokeswoman said.

Published: 11 February 2023 09:40 CET
Düsseldorf
School shooting incidents are relatively uncommon in Germany, which boasts some of the strictest gun regulations in Europe. Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

The 17-year-old was found guilty of planning a serious act of violence endangering the state, the spokeswoman for the higher regional court in Duesseldorf said.

German prosecutors had previously said the teenager, named as Jeremy R., planned the “right-wing extremist motivated attack” for May 13, 2022.

The massacre using explosives and various other weapons was only narrowly prevented when he was arrested the day before.

“Teachers and a larger number of pupils were to be killed” in the attack, the prosecutors said.

Acquired materials and instructions on the internet

Jeremy R., who was 16 at the time of his arrest, had allegedly acquired the necessary materials to assemble pipe bombs and obtained information on the internet about how to build them.

He had also assembled weapons including knives, brass knuckles, machetes, crossbows and arrows as well as firearms, the prosecutors said.

School shootings are relatively rare in Germany, which has some of the strictest gun laws in Europe.

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ANTI-SEMITISM

Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

Anti-Semitic acts rose sharply in Germany last year, especially after war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in October, according to new figures released on Tuesday.

Published: 25 June 2024 17:03 CEST
Germany sees sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts

The Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Anti-Semitism (RIAS) documented 4,782 anti-Semitic “incidents” in 2023 – an increase of more than 80 per cent on the previous year.

More than half of the incidents – which included threats, physical attacks and vandalism – were registered after Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7th attack on Israel, RIAS said.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency last week also published figures showing a new record in anti-Semitic crimes in 2023.

A total of 5,164 crimes were recorded during the year, the agency said, compared with 2,641 in 2022.

Anti-Semitic crimes with a “religious-ideological motivation” jumped to 492 from just 33 the previous year, with the vast majority committed after October 7.

Felix Klein, the government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism, said the RIAS figures were “absolutely catastrophic”.

The Hamas attack had acted as an “accelerant” for anti-Semitism in Germany, he told a press conference in Berlin.

“Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than it has ever been since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded,” he said.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,600 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry said.

Islamophobic incidents also increased dramatically in Germany last year, according to a separate report published on Monday.

The CLAIM alliance against Islamophobia said it had registered 1,926 attacks on Muslims in 2023, compared with just under 900 in 2023.

These included verbal abuse, discrimination, physical violence and damage to property.

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