German suspect in deadly Halle synagogue attack blames refugees
A German neo-Nazi who has gone on trial for a deadly antisemitic shooting at a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle nine months ago has claimed he plotted the attack because of refugees coming into Europe.
Stephan Balliet, 28, was brought by helicopter to the court and his hands and feet were shackled as he appeared in the dock. He said he had felt “superseded” by the hundreds of thousands of refugees who entered Germany in the summer and autumn of 2015.
During testimony that led to the judge, Ursula Mertens, threatening to exclude him from the courtroom for abusive and explicitly racist language, Balliet claimed that being “on the bottom rung of society” justified the attack, one of the worst acts of antisemitic violence in Germany’s postwar history.
Balliet is on trial for 13 offences, including two counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder after trying and failing to storm the synagogue in October.
Prosecutors say Balliet used explosives and firearms to try to gain access to the synagogue, where 52 worshippers were celebrating Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
After failing to break through the synagogue’s locked wooden door, he shot dead a female passerby and a man in a nearby kebab shop. He filmed the assault and livestreamed it on the internet.
The attack shocked Germany and fuelled alarm about rising rightwing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, 75 years after the end of the Nazi era.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who attended a vigil at a Berlin synagogue after the attack, said the bloodshed in Halle showed Germany had “to do more” to protect Jewish people.
In court, Balliet described himself as a loner with few friends who was bad at sport and keen on science. He said he had started to collect weapons in that same year, 2015, selling his childhood toys, electronic equipment and household effects in order to afford more firearms.
Prosecutors in the trial have said that Balliet made a “very comprehensive” confession, confirming “farright and antisemitic motives”. Balliet said he livestreamed the assault using a mobile phone he had bought specifically for the attack. The film is to be shown in court.
Balliet also published documents online that called for the killing of all Jews. He faces an additional charge of incitement to hatred for denying the Holocaust in the footage.
He faces life imprisonment if found guilty.
Asked by Mertens about his childhood, Balliet replied: “It is not important. I don’t want to talk about my private stuff. That has nothing to do with what I did.”
Balliet, who lived with his mother outside Halle, told the court he had prepared for the attack in detail, scouting out the synagogue in advance.
The worshippers inside were saved only because the door had been recently reinforced, the court heard. The door, which still bears the bullet holes, is to be removed and used for a communal art project.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, regarded by many as Germany’s moral compass, said in his Christmas speech last December it was “a miracle” the door had resisted the attack, saving dozens of lives.
“It also symbolises what we stand for. Are we strong and resistant? Do we stand by each other enough?” he said.
The Halle attack came three months after the murder of the local pro-migrant politician Walter LuebckeLübcke in the western city of Kassel, allegedly by a known neo-Nazi.
In February this year, a gunman with apparent far-right beliefs killed nine people at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt.
The interior minister, Horst Seehofer, has since declared far-right extremism the “biggest security threat facing Germany”, and promising to strengthen the security response.
The Balliet trial is expected to continue until mid-October.