Germany
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The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) on Thursday reaffirmed the life sentence given to a neo-Nazi who in 2019 murdered politician Walter Lübcke.

Stephan Ernst received a life sentence in 2021 by a Frankfurt court for the murder of Lübcke in 2019. The killing was considered a wakeup call about the threat of far-right extremism in modern Germany, Deutsche Welle reported.

The court also upheld the not guilty verdict of co-defendant Markus H. who had received a suspended sentence on firearms charges.

"All appeals have been unsuccessful," BHG Judge Jürgen Schäfer ruled. He described the lower court verdicts at the original trial as “without deficits.”

Lübcke, the Christian Democrat center-right leader of the local government in Kassel, a central German town, was shot in the head on June 1, 2019 as he stood on the balcony of his house.

Ernst had become enraged at the politician’s welcoming attitude to migrants, according to German media.

The murder was the first assassination of a politician by a far right extremist in Germany since World War II.

State prosecutors wanted to reopen charges linking Ernst for the stabbing of an Iraqi asylum seeker in 2016 that the Frankfurt court had dismissed. The lower court’s decision was upheld by the BGH.

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