Germany’s Yom Kippur synagogue attack suspect starts trial with racist rant

A German man accused of killing two people in one of the worst acts of anti-Semitic violence in post-war Germany seeks to lay out his racist worldview at the opening of his trial, prompting stern warnings from the judge.

Stephan Balliet, 28, stands accused of shooting dead two people in October after he tried and failed to storm a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle last year.

He has been charged with two counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in a case that has deeply rattled the country and fueled alarm about rising right-wing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, 75 years after the end of the Nazi era.

Addressing the court, Balliet claims he “decided in 2015 not to do anything more for this society which has replaced me with Muslims and Negroes,” in reference to the year when hundreds of thousands asylum seekers, many fleeing war in Syria and Iraq, were given refuge in Germany.

Judge Ursula Mertens cuts him off, warning that he could be thrown out of the hearing.

“I have the possibility to exclude you from the proceedings. I will not tolerate you committing crimes and insulting people in this courtroom.”

Undeterred, Balliet seeks to put forward his racist ideas, claiming he has “no problems with religions but with Semitism.”

Balliet tells the court he had been inspired by a gunman’s 2019 attack on Christchurch mosques in New Zealand, which killed 51 Muslim worshipers.

Prosecutors say Balliet used explosives and firearms to try to gain access to the synagogue, where 52 worshipers were celebrating Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

After failing to break through the synagogue’s locked wooden door, he shot dead a female passerby and a man in a nearby kebab shop.

He apologizes for killing the German woman, saying he “really did not plan to or want to” shoot her.

— AFP