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Files lie on a table in the regional court at the start of the trial.
© Swen Pförtner/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
Two defendants from the right-wing extremist scene were given lenient sentences for an attack on journalists.
This caused massive criticism.
Now the case is going back to court.
Mühlhausen/Karlsruhe - The attack by two men from the right-wing extremist scene on two journalists in 2018 in Fretterode in northern Thuringia must be retried in court.
The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe overturned the Mühlhausen Regional Court's ruling from September 2022 due to factual and legal errors, as the Karlsruhe judges announced on Wednesday.
The appeals by the public prosecutor and a co-plaintiff were therefore successful.
The regional court had sentenced the two defendants to a suspended sentence and to work hours for damage to property and grievous bodily harm.
With the verdict, the court fell well short of the public prosecutor's demands.
Two journalists from Göttingen were seriously injured in the attack in 2018.
They appeared as co-plaintiffs in the trial.
A baseball bat, a long wrench and a knife were used in the attack on the journalists, according to the lawsuit at the time.
At the end of a chase between the defendants and the journalists, an SLR camera was missing.
The Federal Court of Justice overturned the verdict because the regional court's assessment of the evidence proved to be legally incorrect because the crime was not considered a particularly serious robbery, it was said.
The appeal filed at the same time by the defendant, who was an adult at the time of the crime, was rejected as unfounded.
The verdict was met with massive criticism nationwide at the time.
Representatives of the red-red-green government coalition in Thuringia, but also members of alliances against right-wing extremism and journalists' associations spoke of a “scandalous verdict” that sent a completely wrong signal.
The case must now be reheard in another chamber of the regional court.
dpa