Defendant 18 years after the Wehrhahn attack acquitted | TIME ONLINE

Dusseldorf (dpa) – The bomb attack against a group of students from the Wehrhahn train station in Düsseldorf 18 years ago remains unpunished: The district court acquitted an accused of 52 years of the alleged murder of xenophobia in twelve cases,

The evidence was too poor, in the testimony there were inconsistencies, said President Rainer Drees. The homemade bomb filled with TNT was the subject of carnage on July 27, 2000. Ten people from a group of twelve people were injured in the bombing, some of which are deadly. An unborn baby died in the womb. The victims were immigrants from Eastern Europe, many of whom were Jewish.

The defense had asked for the defendant's acquittal. He had contacts on the right scene. He was in detention for more than a year. "The evidence has not provided evidence of its perpetration," argued the defense. The accused had been accused by completely unbelievable witnesses. There is no trace of him on the scene.

The court joined the doubts. "We did not facilitate the verdict," said the president of the court. But even the statements of the two detainees, to which the accused confessed, were neither viable nor credible.

In contrast, the prosecutor's office had pleaded for life imprisonment. The accused was found guilty of a long series of circumstantial evidence and no doubt the culprit, she said in her plea.

In unison, the representatives of the co-plaintiffs joined them and declared the accused guilty: he had betrayed himself several times in recorded telephone conversations. The overall image is clear and eliminates any doubt. The Chamber was about to commit "the most serious legal error in the history of Düsseldorf," warned the plaintiffs' representative, Yuri Rogner.

During the trial, several witnesses withdrew or relativized their statements. They may have already been with their declaration variants for the application of relief or reward, the suspected defenders. The 52-year-old man was a "steam speaker and a dumb", but not a very dangerous right-wing extremist with sociopathic traits as the prosecution claims.

The acquittal was no longer surprising. The Chamber had already released the accused in May. There was no more urgent suspicion against him, she had already decided.