As of: March 6, 2024, 3:10 p.m
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A police officer walks across the cordoned off part of a crime scene in a cemetery.
© Christoph Schmidt/dpa
A man has to be taken into custody after throwing hand grenades at a community of mourners.
Altbach's crime is just the climax of a series of violence around Stuttgart.
And the court's work is not over.
Stuttgart - Before he detonates the hand grenade at the funeral in Altbach near Esslingen and injures 15 people, some seriously, in front of the funeral hall, the 24-year-old wants to be on the safe side.
On the Internet he searches for answers to questions about live blank guns and machetes, about prison sentences for attempted murder and about the thoughts of revenge and murderous fantasies that surround him.
The young man carried these thoughts with him for months until he finally decided to throw the hand grenade at the Altbach cemetery last June.
A rival gang has gathered there to bury one of their followers.
An attack “characterized by particularly reprehensibleness,” as the presiding judge of the Stuttgart Regional Court described it on Wednesday.
The chamber sentenced the Iranian to twelve years in prison for attempted murder, among other things.
The verdict falls between the demands of the prosecution and defense.
The Altbach attack is just one chapter in the long history of a bloody feud between rival groups in the greater Stuttgart area.
But it is the case that has attracted the most attention so far because of its seriousness.
Up to 200 people came to the cemetery of the 6,000-strong community on the Neckar for the funeral.
And the so-called effective lethal fragmentation radius of the grenade is about 20 meters, according to investigators.
Individual parts can cause serious injuries from dozens of meters away when the 3,000 steel balls fire powerfully in all directions.
Pure chance saves many lives
If everything had gone as the 24-year-old had planned, numerous people could have died.
“The story in Altbach could have been a horror scenario,” said the judge in his verdict.
“That was what you wanted.
But fate was kind to you.” Because the grenade ricocheted off a branch, landed 30 meters away from the mourners and exploded.
The confession and behavior of the accused Iranian saved him from life imprisonment and possibly also preventive detention, the judge emphasized several times.
The 24-year-old is a “criminal who understood the turning point”.
Further trials regarding Altbach are ongoing
However, the regional court's ruling will not end the legal investigation into the hand grenade attack in the Neckar Valley.
Because after the verdict against the hand grenade thrower, five young men are also being tried, who are said to have tried together with others to take revenge on the sympathizer of the enemy group after the explosion.
They are accused, among other things, of attempted manslaughter, attempted and grievous bodily harm, and resistance to emergency services.
Further charges were recently filed in this case.
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The group of 10 to 15 people is said to have caught the suspected grenade thrower as he was fleeing, dragged him out of a taxi and beat him up as if he were intoxicated.
Until the police arrived, they beat and kicked him and, according to the prosecutor, did not let go of him when paramedics tried to help.
The Iranian suffered life-threatening injuries, was in an induced coma and suffered damage.
Bloody gang war in the Stuttgart area
According to investigators and the court, the background to the crime is a gang war that has been raging around Stuttgart for many months.
The grenade thrower is said to belong to a gang from the Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen and Göppingen area; the mourners were close to another group from the Esslingen area.
However, even after the first Altbach trial, the man's motivation for his attack in the cemetery remains unclear.
People were repeatedly shot at during the feud.
According to the State Criminal Police Office (LKA), there have been 57 arrests so far.
According to the Interior Ministry and LKA, the total of around 550 followers and supporters are mainly young men who are already known to the police.
“Some of them have a migrant background, and in the core of the groups there are also several people of Kurdish ethnicity,” explained State Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU).
According to investigators, it is unclear why the two groups joined forces and why they are fighting each other so bloodily.
It's not about family clans or classic gang crime.
Rather, the violence escalated after mostly mutual insults to honor; it was about territorial claims to power and the motto “Crime as a Lifestyle,” with which many in the groups strongly identified.
dpa