The alleged murderer of the CDU politician Walter Lübcke is accused by the Federal Prosecutor's Office to have committed another right-wing extremist motivated homicidal offense. According to information of the SPIEGEL, the Karlsruhe prosecution has extended the investigation against the suspect Stephan Ernst accordingly.
Attorney General Peter Frank investigates Ernst for attempted murder of an Iraqi refugee. The then 22-year-old resident of an asylum-seeker accommodation in Lohfelden, Hesse, was stabbed by a stranger on January 6, 2016, and seriously injured.
For more than three years, the Hessian police determined unsuccessfully. Only after the murder of Walter Lübcke right-wing extremist Ernst came under concrete suspicion - end of July, the locally competent prosecutor Kassel initiated a trial for attempted manslaughter against him and searched his house.
Now, the federal prosecutor's office extended the allegation of attempted murder and pulled the investigation into the matter itself. Among other things, this is possible under the law if a case is relevant under state protection law and if it has a "special significance". Apparently the Federal Prosecutor's Office met these criteria. As the SPIEGEL learned, the investigators see evidence of a treacherous act of action and lower motives, namely racist motives. Thus legally two essential murder characteristics would be fulfilled.
According to SPIEGEL information, the suspicion against Ernst is based on a number of indications. So he is said to have confessed in a - now withdrawn - confession, on the day of the attack on the Iraqi not far from the asylum seekers housing Lohfelden had a verbal confrontation with a person who he considered a refugee. Ernst is said to have berated the man, among other things, racist.
The Federal Attorneys also consider the fact that the scene of the knife attack on the same day was only 2.5 kilometers from Ernst's house as a further incriminating indication. The investigators also assume that Ernst was at the time of the crime close to the crime scene. In addition, there is the "open right-wing extremist racist sentiment" of the suspect and his past as right-wing extremist violent offenders.
Ernst had once in 1992 with a knife on a supposed foreigner, which he had happened to meet at the station in Wiesbaden.
In the case of the attack on the Iraqi refugee in Lohfelden, the Hessian investigating authorities had recently come under fire. Thus the public prosecutor's office Kassel had apparently only this August by a SPIEGEL inquiry learn that the police in the investigation of the knife attack on the Iraqi right-wing extremist Ernst had already checked in 2016.
Interviewed by SPIEGEL on the events, his defender Frank Hannig said that his client - then as now - deny the allegations.
In June Ernst had confessed to having killed the CDU politician Lübcke on his property with a headshot. As a motive, he stated that he had annoyed Lübcke's attitude to refugee policy - including statements made by the politician at a town hall meeting for refugee accommodation in Lohfelden, in which he himself had participated.
In an hour-long interrogation Ernst revealed the investigators, among other things, the hiding place of the murder weapon and named his weapons suppliers. A short time later, he revoked the confession surprisingly. At present Ernst, against whom the Federal Prosecutor's Office investigates the murder, is in custody.
