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The accused in court in Munich
Photo: Britta Schultejans / dpa
The Munich district court has sentenced a man to one year in prison for calling the police officers killed in Kusel, Rhineland-Palatinate, "bastards" and wishing their Munich colleagues the same fate.
The 35-year-old, who has a criminal record, apologized on Thursday and blamed the verbal gaffe on his problematic alcohol consumption.
According to his defense attorney, he had a blood alcohol level of 2.5 at the time of the crime in early February.
The man was sentenced without parole, among other things, for rewarding and condoning crimes and denigrating the memory of the deceased.
The attorney general's office had asked for a year and four months without probation, and the defense for a year's probation.
According to his own statements, the accused had started getting drunk after an argument with his sister.
At the time, police officers drove to his Munich apartment after he had rioted there.
He insulted the officers, according to the indictment, saying they should be shot just like the "bastards" the previous week.
The man fully admitted the charges in court.
Defendant denies racism allegations
At the same time, the 35-year-old emphasized that he had nothing against the police.
His cousin is a police officer and he is not a racist either.
He has friends who are foreigners.
He blamed his childhood in Thuringia for making explicitly racist and anti-Semitic statements, as he is accused of in the indictment.
There he "grew up with CDs and stuff like that."
However, he had "long since turned away" from the ideology.
At the end of January, a 24-year-old police officer and a 29-year-old police commissioner were shot and killed during a night-time vehicle check.
The trial against a 39-year-old who, according to the investigators, is said to have shot the two officers to cover up poaching is currently underway at the Kaiserslautern district court.
The act of violence in Rhineland-Palatinate caused horror across the country.
A 33-year-old accomplice is accused of attempted evasion.
He is said to have helped cover up the tracks.
At the beginning of the trial, the two men incriminated each other.
In the case of hate speech against the police officers killed by the man in Munich, the relatives of one of Kusel's two victims had filed a criminal complaint.
According to a spokesman for the Munich district court, the trial against the 35-year-old is "one of the first trials ever for hate speech to the detriment of these officials or their relatives".
As recently as June, investigating authorities had searched the homes of 75 suspects in 15 federal states in connection with hatred and hate speech on the Internet.
"Consistent government action is required," said the Rhineland-Palatinate Interior Minister Roger Lewentz (SPD) at the time.
After the violent death of the police officers, the LKA set up its own investigation group »Hatespeech«.
kko/dpa
