In what the prosecution called "the most serious legal error" in Düsseldorf's history, the city's District Court on Tuesday acquitted a neo-Nazi accused of bombing Jewish immigrants in 2000.
The suspect, 52-year-old neo-Nazi Ralf Spies, was accused of planting a plastic bag containing a pipe bomb at Düsseldorf's Wehrhahn train station. Upon explosion, the bomb injured ten people, six of whom were Jews from the former Soviet Union.
Though the prosecution demanded a life sentence, neo-Nazi Ralf Spies, 52, was acquitted of twelve counts of attempted murder after the court claimed"inadequate evidence."
German authorities had provided over 900 tips, including recorded telephone calls in which Spies admitted involvement in the attack.
According to Chief Prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck, Spies' motive in the attack was to keep his neighborhood "clean."
In 2014, while imprisoned for a different crime, Spies bragged to another inmate that he had perpetrated the Düsseldorf attack.