Germany Sentences Neo-Nazis to Prison for Assault on Africans

Meting out swift justice in another case of anti-foreigner violence, a German court Wednesday sentenced two neo-Nazi youths to prison and two to probation for assaulting two African asylum seekers and then chasing them through this city.

The sentences came just 7 1/2 weeks after the July 29 attack on the men, from Togo and Sudan. The defendants admitted at the trial that they were motivated by hatred of foreigners.

Stefan Wagner, 19, who one of the victims said began the attack, received the longest sentence--18 months for causing serious bodily harm and for slander.

Karl-Heinz Statzberger, 19, was sentenced to 14 months. Christian Guenther, 19, and David Schulz, 17, were given probation of a year and of seven months, respectively.

The sentences were slightly less than what prosecutors had demanded.

The two victims had testified that their attackers emerged from a group of about 20 neo-Nazis in bomber jackets and jackboots. Kwame Amenyo, the Togolese, testified that Wagner started the attack by spitting beer into his face.

Ahmed Faisal, from Sudan, said the assailants began kicking him when he tried to run for help.

The defendants said that they had been drinking heavily and that there had been only some “pushing around.”

Judge Thomas Brencher said the defendants displayed a disregard for human life and a lack of education that contributed to their xenophobic views.

He said he hoped that the quick reaction of the police and courts demonstrated that authorities weren’t passively observing acts of right-wing violence.

A court last month in Halle--which is, like Eisenach, in formerly communist eastern Germany--sentenced three young neo-Nazis to long prison terms for killing a Mozambican man, one of at least three victims to die in neo-Nazi attacks this summer.

Those deaths have fueled a wave of concern over hate crimes in Germany that was punctuated by a still-unsolved bomb attack at a Duesseldorf train station in July that injured 10 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, six of them Jewish, and killed an unborn child.