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A German court handed an Afghan man a life sentence on Thursday for a car-ramming attack in Munich last year which killed a two-year-old girl and her mother and left dozens injured.
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The court in Munich found the man, named only as Farhad N., guilty of two counts of murder, 23 of attempted murder and 22 counts of bodily harm, 19 of them serious.
The court found that the offences carried a “particular gravity of guilt,” a designation that makes it much less likely that the 25-year-old will ever be released from prison.
The attack was one of several committed by foreign nationals in the run-up to last year’s general election that inflamed debate on immigration and security.
It also came on the eve of the Munich Security Conference, a major gathering of high-level figures from the worlds of politics and defence.
Farhad N. drove a Mini Cooper around a police car and then accelerated into a 1,400-strong trade union march, hurling a 37-year-old woman and her young daughter through the air for 10 metres.
They both sustained severe head injuries from which they died several days later.
Presiding judge Michael Hoehne said that the mother had deliberately chosen the back of the march because it had a stronger police presence and she felt safer there.
Hoehne described the aftermath of the attack as “a field of nothing but debris, 12 metres wide.”
He said some of those injured “are still suffering today” and quoted one victim as saying they had lived “one life before the attack and another one after it.”
The only reason the attack was not even deadlier was that the number of people Farhad N. ran over slowed down and eventually stopped the car, Hoehne said.
Farhad N. himself showed no emotion as the verdict was read out.
Online radicalisation
Prosecutors said during the trial that Farhad N. acted out of a “religious motivation” and had uttered the words “Allahu Akbar,” meaning “God is the greatest”, after the car rampage.
However, he is not believed to have been part of any organised jihadist movement such as the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.
Prosecutors also pointed to his loneliness and anxiety as contributing factors. Farhad N. himself did not disclose any motivation during the trial.
Hoehne described Farhad N. as having “a fragile sense of self-worth” while trying to present “an idealised image of himself.”
His defence team had asked for him to be sent to a psychiatric facility despite court-appointed experts determining that his mental health problems did not reduce his degree of responsibility.
Farhad N. arrived in Germany unaccompanied in 2016, when he was 15. His asylum request was rejected but he was allowed to stay in the country and find work.
Police said Farhad N. worked in security and was heavily engaged in fitness training and bodybuilding.
He is thought to have been radicalised in the months leading up to the attack by consuming content online from radical Afghan preachers.
The attack came just days before the February 2025 general election which saw the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieve its best-ever result of over 20%.
The centre-right CDU/CSU came first and its leader Friedrich Merz became chancellor, promising to take a tougher line on immigration and stave off the AfD’s rise.
However, since then the CDU/CSU has slumped while the AfD has established a steady lead in opinion polls.
Additional sources • AFP
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