Neo-Nazi is jailed for life for killing pro-migration German MP in country’s first far-right political assassination since WWII

• Stephan Ernst, 47, handed a life sentence for killing German MP Walter Luebcke
• The member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party was found dead on June 1, 2019
• It is believed the killing is the first political assassination since World War II
• Co-defendant Markus Hartmann found guilty on weapons possession charges

A neo-Nazi has been sentenced to life in prison after killing a pro-migration German MP in what is believed to be the country’s first political assassination since World War II.

Stephan Ernst, 47, was found guilty of shooting dead Walter Luebcke, 65, a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party, on June 1, 2019.

An autopsy found that the conservative politician was shot in the head at close range after having been found lifeless on the terrace of his home in Kassel. 

Speaking in December, the prosecution said Ernst had been motivated by ‘racism and xenophobia’. 

Neo-Nazi Stephan Ernst, 47, (pictured) has been sentenced to life in prison after killing a pro-migration German MP in what is believed to be the country’s first political assassination since World War II

Ernst was found guilty of shooting dead Walter Luebcke, 65, a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party, on June 1, 2019. Pictured: Judge Thomas Sagebiel speaking to the courtroom prior to the verdict

A co-defendant, Markus Hartmann, who had been accused of being an accessory in the killing and allegedly helping Ernst in weapons training, was cleared of the complicity charge but found guilty on weapons possession charges and received a suspended sentence of 1.5 years. 

Luebcke supported the decision in 2015 to open Germany’s borders to refugees and spoke in favour of hosting asylum seekers in local towns. 

Prosecutors believe Ernst and Hartmann attended a speech by Luebcke in October 2015 when the politician defended helping refugees, adding that anyone who did not agree with those values was ‘free to leave the country’. 

The comment was shared widely on social media and turned Luebcke into a hate figure for the far-right. 

After the speech, Ernst ‘increasingly projected his hatred of foreigners’ on to Luebcke, prosecutors said at the opening of the trial in June.

Following mass sexual assaults by migrants against women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015 and a 2016 Islamist attack in the French city of Nice, Ernst allegedly began tracking Luebcke’s movements.

Between 2016 and 2018, prosecutors say he worked with Hartmann to improve his skill with firearms, and the two attended right-wing demonstrations together.

In the course of their investigations, prosecutors separately charged Ernst with attempted murder for allegedly stabbing an Iraqi asylum seeker in the back in 2016.

They also uncovered weapons and ammunition belonging to Ernst, including revolvers, pistols and a submachine gun.

Although Ernst initially admitted killing Luebcke, he later retracted his confession and said Hartmann had pulled the trigger.

Although Ernst initially admitted killing Luebcke, he later retracted his confession and said Hartmann had pulled the trigger. He then sacked his defence lawyer and reverted to his original confession, claiming he had been pushed into blaming Hartmann. Prosecutors considered Ernst’s first confession to be the most credible, deeming the rest to be trial tactics.

But he then sacked his defence lawyer and reverted to his original confession, claiming he had been pushed into blaming Hartmann.

Prosecutors considered Ernst’s first confession to be the most credible, deeming the rest to be trial tactics. 

Ernst was known to police as a neo-Nazi sympathiser and was convicted of an attempted bomb attack on an asylum home in 1993. German media say he took part in neo-Nazi clashes targeting a union demonstration in 2009.

But Ernst then slipped off the security services’ radar, fuelling criticism that the authorities were not taking the far-right threat seriously enough.

German police came under fire years earlier for overlooking racist crimes after it emerged that a neo-Nazi terror cell, the National Socialist Underground, had killed 10 people, mainly immigrants, between 2000 in 2007.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has declared far-right extremism the ‘biggest security threat facing Germany’. He has promised tougher security measures, including a crackdown on online hate speech. Pictured: State prosecutors arrive in the courtroom prior to the verdict, earlier today

In October 2019, just months after Luebcke’s death, Germany was rocked by a shooting at a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle that left two people dead.

Neo-Nazi Stephan Balliet, 28, was sentenced to life in prison in December for that attack, described as the country’s worst anti-Semitic atrocity since World War II.

Last February, another gunman shot dead nine people of migrant origin in the central town of Hanau.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has declared far-right extremism the ‘biggest security threat facing Germany’.

He has promised tougher security measures, including a crackdown on online hate speech.

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