German court jails neo- Nazis over refugee attack plans

A German court on Wednesday sentenced members of a neo-Nazi group to up to five years in prison for forming a “terror organization” that planned to attack a home for asylum seekers.

The four – three men and a 24- year- old woman identified as Denise Vanessa G. – were arrested in May 2015, two days before they planned to strike at the migrant shelter in the eastern state of Saxony.

Known as the “Old School Society,” their choice of weapon was modified “pyrotechnic explosives, particularly in the form of fire and nail bombs,” which they were planning to hurl into a refugee home, the prosecutor had said.

The group had therefore “accepted that people could be killed,” chief prosecutor Joern Hauschild had told the court.

The ringleader Andreas H., 58, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison while his second- in- command, Marcus W., 41, got five years.

The group’s “spokesperson” Olaf G., 31, was given three years while the only woman was sentenced to three years and 10 months.

The sentences were however more lenient than the four and a half to seven years sought by the prosecutor.

The four met on the Internet in 2014.

In preparation for the attacks, they bought large quantities of banned fireworks from the Czech Republic and subsequently decided to cover the explosives with a layer of nails to make them more lethal.