According to a German magazine, the 29 year old suspect has been on the run from authorities for years.Continue reading
As Magyar Nemzet reports, the verdict in the trial against the leader and three members of the so-called Hammerbande (Hammer Gang), a left-wing extremist storm troop supported by Antifa, was announced in Dresden on Wednesday. Leader Lina Engel was sentenced to five years and three months.
Four members of the Hammer Gang, who also took part in the attacks in Budapest, have been convicted in a trial at a regional court in Saxony. After 97 days of trial, presiding judge Hans Schlueter-Staats in Dresden announced the verdict against the four defendants for membership in a criminal organization.
The main defendant, Lina Engel, was sentenced to five years and three months imprisonment, her accomplices Lennart Zaphod Arning to three years, Philipp Jonathan Mohr to three years and three months, and Jannis Rohling to two years for forming a criminal organization and dangerous bodily harm.
The verdict is not yet final.
Among other offenses, the federal prosecution has accused Engel and her accomplices of forming a criminal association to attack right-wing people. According to the indictment, they carried out several attacks on right-wing supporters in Wurzen in Saxony, Leipzig, and Eisenach in Thuringia between 2018 and 2020. Several people were seriously injured in the process. Engel is said to be the leader of the Hammer Gang, a far-left organization founded in Leipzig that has established a nationwide network.
For weeks, Antifa has announced Day X for the first Saturday after the day of the verdict, calling for street fights against the verdict against Engel. They have promised to cause one million euros of damage in German cities for every year in prison, so German authorities are looking at damages of between five million and three hundred thousand euros this Saturday.
In February, members of the Hammer Gang who are still at large, staged a manhunt in Budapest, beating up eight people and seriously injuring German, Polish, and Hungarian citizens.
The Budapest Police Directorate, working closely with German authorities, has so far identified ten of the alleged attackers and arrested four of them. Of these, one Hungarian has been released, a German woman is under criminal investigation, and an Italian woman and Tobias E. from Germany are in pre-trial detention awaiting the conclusion of the investigation in Budapest. Six German Antifa members are still wanted.
Via Magyar Nemzet, Images: Facebook, Facebook Antifa