FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A German court sentenced a far-right sympathiser to life imprisonment on Thursday for shooting dead a pro-immigration politician two years ago in a case that raised questions about whether Germany is doing enough to tackle right-wing radicalism.
Walter Luebcke, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, was found dead in a pool of blood outside his house in the western state of Hesse in June 2019. He had been shot in the head at close range.
The court convicted the defendant, Stephan Ernst, of the homicide of Luebcke in Hesse by shooting him on the night of June 1-2 2019.
“The accused was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Dr. Luebcke,” the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt said on its official Twitter account.
Luebcke was a figure of hate for the far-right because of his outspoken support for Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open Germany’s doors to hundreds of thousand of migrants and asylum seekers, many of them fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.
(Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Gareth Jones)
