2024-02-01 23:55:22
A trial against three men over an explosive device that exploded at a refugee accommodation in Graz in 2010 ended largely with acquittals in the Leoben regional court on Friday night. A now 29-year-old initially confessed everything, but then withdrew it. The jury found that none of the three could be proven responsible for the detonation. However, two men received sentences for National Socialist re-activation.
The jury decided that none of the three defendants were guilty of the explosive device under Section 3f of the Criminal Code, but two of them were guilty of Section 3g, which criminalized National Socialist re-activation. In both cases it involves tattoos of forbidden symbols. For this, the 29-year-old received 15 months of conditional imprisonment, and a second defendant received two years of conditional imprisonment. The third defendant was completely acquitted. The verdict is not final because the public prosecutor’s office made no statement.
On September 11, 2010, around 1:40 a.m., a detonation was heard at the entrance to the refugee home in Graz. 35 residents and one carer were woken from their sleep. A 49-year-old Georgian fell and injured himself while going to investigate. Otherwise there were no injuries, but according to investigations at the time, the pipe or can-shaped explosive device would have been capable of seriously injuring people. As we now know, the explosive device was laced with black powder.
For 13 years there was no trace of the suspects. Only a witness in another case claims to have recognized the 29-year-old from the photos. When the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Combating Terrorism (LVT) questioned the suspect, he confessed. However, he then stated in court that he had been under pressure and believed he had to prove his innocence. He was unable to do that due to a lack of an alibi and therefore confessed to the crime.
On the first day of the trial, the 29-year-old native of Lower Austria surprisingly withdrew his initial confession. He doesn’t even want to have been at the crime scene. He also retracted his statements that the other two men were also involved. However, the 29-year-old repeatedly became entangled in contradictions when questioned by judge Sabine Anzenberger. Some of the men were also charged with National Socialist re-activity. For example, one of them publicly displayed a tattoo of the Black Sun, a forbidden symbol, during fights for several years. The public prosecutor’s office had only expanded the charges against one of the three because of this tattoo on Thursday.
Since the trial began in December, the judge had carried out further investigations to collect evidence, but a forensic report on the photos of the suspect from a surveillance camera could not be presented due to the lack of original images. “The LVT was unable to provide these,” said Anzenberger. It was also not possible to compare the size of the person in the pictures because the bench in the background, which was intended to serve as a reference, has now been demolished. An original recording cannot be found at the LVT either, according to the judge.
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