German synagogue attacker gets 7 more years for taking hostages in failed jailbreak
Far-right extremist already serving life sentence for attempt to break into a synagogue on Yom Kippur in 2019 that he broadcast online before killing 2 passersby
BERLIN (AP) — A German far-right extremist already serving a life sentence following an attempt to attack a synagogue in 2019 was convicted Tuesday of hostage-taking for his actions in a jailbreak attempt.
Stephan Balliet, 32, was sentenced to seven years in prison, German news agency dpa reported. He also was ordered to make payments to several people.
The defendant acknowledged during the trial that he took prison officers in the eastern town of Burg hostage with a homemade weapon in December 2022 in an attempt to escape. Other guards overwhelmed him and the hostages were freed unharmed.
Balliet was sentenced to life in prison in 2020 for his attack the previous year, in which he killed two people.
Armed with multiple firearms and explosives, Balliet attacked the synagogue in Halle on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. After failing to break down the synagogue’s door, he killed a passerby and a man inside a nearby fast-food restaurant.
Dressed in military garb, he filmed the attack and broadcast it on the internet, prefacing it with a manifesto espousing his misogynist, neo-fascist ideology.
During his five-month trial, Balliet denied the Holocaust in open court — a crime in Germany — and expressed no remorse to those targeted, many of whom were co-plaintiffs in the case.
He insisted during the hearings that “attacking the synagogue was not a mistake, they are my enemies.”
In the hostage-taking case, the Stendal state court moved the proceedings to the larger city of Magdeburg, which has a high security courtroom.
The antisemitic attack deeply rattled the country and fueled alarm about rising right-wing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, almost 80 years after the end of the Nazi era.
AFP contributed to this report.
