Five years in prison for Lina E.: Left-wing extremists have caught up in brutality Ron DeSantis: Trump rival has his first scandal on the cheek

It is the harshest verdict in years against members of the left-wing extremist scene in Germany: 28-year-old Lina E. and two other defendants stood before the Saxon Higher Regional Court in Dresden. E. was sentenced to five years and three months in prison on Wednesday, the other suspected men to three years and three months and two years and five months respectively. The three had formed a criminal organization, the court ruled in its verdict.

The German federal prosecutor’s office had demanded an eight-year prison sentence for Lina E. For parts of the left-wing scene, the former student, who has been imprisoned for two and a half years, is a heroine: the cry “#FreeLina” can be read on the walls of houses in major German cities; In the courtroom in Dresden, E. was greeted with applause by her numerous supporters who had come. “Fuck class justice” and “hog system” some shouted after the verdict; the hearing had to be temporarily suspended.

Several raids in Saxony and Thuringia

The trial against E. and her comrades-in-arms raises public awareness of a problem that has received relatively little attention so far: in the shadow of right-wing extremism, a violent left-wing extremism has emerged, especially in the east of the country, which has only is a small scene compared to neo-Nazism, whose brutality is hardly inferior to that of the right-wing radicals.

Lina E. and her hiding friend Johann G. are seen as the leaders of the left-wing extremist scene. Between 2018 and 2020, they are said to have been involved in multiple raids on neo-Nazis. For example, in February 2020 they allegedly attacked several neo-Nazis with bats and beer bottles at the train station in the small Saxon town of Wurzen; a 15-year-old suffered a life-threatening head injury. The verdict against E. is not undisputed: no victim or witness could recognize the masked attackers, and apart from an attack in Eisenach, Thuringia, there was no clear evidence.

“Even a violent Nazi is not outlawed by his actions,” the president of the court said on Wednesday. In East Germany, however, it is increasingly common for left-wing extremists to take the fight against the right into their own hands. For example, in the spring of 2021, Paul Rzehaczek, an official of the far-right NPD, was attacked in his apartment in Eilenburg, Saxony; the perpetrators used emergency hammers on his ankles. Two months later, perpetrators disguised as policemen beat a neo-Nazi with hammers in Erfurt; They poured a chlorinated liquid on his pregnant girlfriend.

Lina E. initially dealt with right-wing extremism in a scientific way: the educationalist wrote her bachelor’s thesis ‘Dealing with neo-Nazism in youth work’. She had to do with a youth club in Jena, frequented by the terrorists of the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi terrorist group that killed nine citizens with a migration background and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007. E., who came from Hessen and moved to Leipzig to study, would be influenced by her friend Johann G.

Violent extremism has been on the rise in Germany for years: in 2022, the number of politically motivated crimes will reach almost 60,000, the highest since the statistics were introduced. Most of the offenses were committed by right-wing extremists and by perpetrators who had been radicalized by the government’s corona measures. The number of crimes motivated by left-wing extremism fell by 30 percent to 842 compared to the previous year, while the number of right-wing extremist crimes increased by 12 percent to 1,170.

Hope for signal effect

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Wednesday that left-wing extremists are less reluctant to attack political opponents with extreme brutality. Thomas Haldenwang, head of the domestic secret service, also sees it this way: “If the radicalization spiral continues and the acts become increasingly brutal and uninhibited, then the moment is approaching when we should also speak of left-wing terrorism,” he says. commented on the verdict.

It can be assumed that politicians hope that the judge’s ruling will have a signaling effect: on potential perpetrators, but also on the population. According to numerous studies, the far-right AfD is fast becoming the strongest party in East Germany. If the citizen were to get the impression that politics and the judiciary are blind in the left eye, that would probably help the right. (aargauerzeitung.ch)