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A German neo-Nazi was given a life sentence on Thursday for the 2019 murder of pro-refugee politician Walter Lübcke, a killing that shocked the country.
A court in Frankfurt found 47-year-old Stephan Ernst guilty of shooting dead Lübcke, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who had advocated for a welcoming refugee policy. He was found dead on the terrace of his home near the city of Kassel in central Germany in June 2019.
The judges, noting the “special gravity” of the crime, sentenced Ernst to life in prison without the possibility of parole — the sentence sought by the prosecutors, who had argued the gunman had been motivated by “racism and xenophobia.”
Ernst had links to the neo-Nazi scene and a long criminal history, including convictions for an attempted bomb attack on an asylum seekers’ home in 1993.
A co-defendant, named in the German press as Markus H., a known neo-Nazi, was found guilty of weapons possession charges and received a suspended sentence of 18 months. He was found not guilty of being an accessory to the murder.
Lübcke was an outspoken supporter of Merkel’s decision to welcome nearly one million refugees in 2015 and received numerous death threats. His murder is considered the first political assassination by far-right extremists in Germany since the end of World War II.
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