Enlarge image
Left-wing demonstrators in Stuttgart (archive image)
Photo: Christoph Schmidt / picture alliance / dpa
The Stuttgart Regional Court has sentenced two men from the left-wing scene to prison terms of four and a half and five and a half years.
The district court saw it as proven that they brutally attacked three men on the sidelines of a "lateral thinker" demo in Stuttgart in May of last year.
One of the attacked was critically injured and was in a coma for several weeks.
Another victim is said to be almost blind in one eye after being beaten to the head and face, and a third man apparently suffered a concussion.
The court awarded the injured party the right to compensation for pain and suffering without setting a sum.
The 21 and 26-year-old defendants were found guilty of dangerous bodily harm and breach of the peace in a particularly serious case.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The attack was carried out by a group of 20 to 40 masked men, which prosecutors believed included the two defendants.
Their later victims had agreed to meet at the demonstration as members of the "Zentrum Automobil" association, which calls itself a trade union and is assigned to the right-wing spectrum.
Refused to testify
The defendants had rejected the allegations on the first day of the trial, but otherwise refused to testify.
In his judgment, the judge spoke of a "sad case of ideological delusion".
The perpetrators did not stop at convincing others of their opinion that they wanted to fight the victims as fascists.
According to the court's finding, the defendants were incriminated by a police undercover agent, DNA traces and a hair on an irritant gas pistol that could be assigned to one of the two defendants.
The public prosecutor's office had demanded prison sentences of up to six years, the defense lawyers requested acquittal for their clients.
bbr / AFP
