As Germany grapples with a rising tide of violence against migrants and refugees, a judge this week sent an unequivocal message to perpetrators of racially-motivated attacks.
Two men and a woman received sentences ranging from four-and-a-half to eight years in prison for hurling a gasoline bomb into an asylum-seekers’ apartment last year.
The three were motivated by “National Socialist xenophobic and racial hatred,” the chief judge at the Hannover district court, Wolfgang Rosenbusch, declared on March 17.
The nighttime attack on August 28 in Salzhemmendorf, a small town in central Germany, targeted a mother from Zimbabwe and her three children. The bomb exploded in the 11-year-old son’s room, but he was sleeping with his mother and siblings at the time.
“That, what you have done, is nothing other than what the SA [Nazi party paramilitary] did on November 9, 1938,” said Judge Rosenbusch, referring to Kristallnacht.
The stiff sentences send a warning to others who have attacked or are contemplating attacks against foreigners in Germany: courts will treat you harshly for breaking the law.
Germany has accepted more than 1 million asylum-seekers since January 2015, and violence against these people and other foreigners has surged. About 1,200 attacks have targeted refugee shelters over the past 15 months, according to Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an independent organization that tracks racist attacks.
A new law that came into effect last July requires courts to consider “racist, xenophobic or other inhumane motives” as aggravating factors in crimes. A crucial step now is training law enforcement and judicial authorities to improve the investigation and prosecution of racially-motivated crimes.
The sentence in Hannover should set an example that Germany’s justice system will forcefully confront racist attacks.
