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Shortly after eleven o’clock in the morning, the presiding judge Ursula Mertens begins: “The following sentence is issued on behalf of the people …” It is the people, in whose alleged “defense” the defendant Stephan Balliet, 28, On October 9, 2019, he wanted to kill as many Jews as possible in the Halle synagogue. His act is considered one of the worst anti-Semitic attacks since World War II. “We look into the depths of humanity,” Mertens will say at the end of the process.
The former chemistry student from Benndorf, near Halle, failed at the door of the synagogue with his arsenal built by himself. Annoyed, he shot Jana L., a passerby, who was passing by, and then, in a kebab shop, the painter Kevin S.’s day laborer, whom he thought was Muslim. While fleeing the police, he ran into a Somali man in the street and injured several people, some seriously.
Not once did the defendant look at the bank
Balliet filmed his campaign with a helmet camera and posted the video as a live webcast, along with a brochure with the headline: “Kill all Jews.”
There is no other choice when it comes to sentencing, says the presiding judge: two murders and 66 attempted murders, dangerous bodily injury, Holocaust denial, sedition, predatory extortion, banned auto racing and more, all committed with a coldness. and unprecedented human contempt: the court speaks life imprisonment and determines the particular gravity of the guilt. In addition, the Senate imposes preventive detention on Stephan Balliet. As the president announces the sentence, the defendant in his dark anorak doesn’t even look at the bench.
The court heard 26 days, 73 witnesses and eight experts gave their opinion. Balliet expressed his anti-Semitic, racist and misogynistic views in court. He smiled when the president played the video of the crime in the room, raised his eyebrows in contempt when the joint plaintiffs from the synagogue reported how his attack had evoked in them the family trauma of the Shoah.
“As a judge, I have already experienced many unbearable things,” Mertens addressed the defendant, “but this trial, Mr. Balliet, ruins everything.”
“You left the apartment like a bad black man”
The president recalls how meticulously Balliet prepared her writing, how she secretly built firearms and explosive devices for years and stored them in the bed box, how she donned her grim riot gear on the day of the event: helmet, protective vest, boots . Mertens to Balliet: “You left the apartment a bad nigger, as the children would say.”
The defendant, “who was still sitting at his computer in his mother’s room in the Benndorf children’s room at the age of 28,” said the president, had developed, guided by abstruse conspiracy theories, a hatred deeply ingrained racial over the years, which led to his heinous and inhuman act. he had brought “hatred to people who had done nothing to him, whom he did not know either,” but whom he blamed for his personal failure.
The defendant Balliet, security forces: an incredible act
Photo: PISCINA / REUTERS
And then Mertens did what was important to her throughout the process when the verdict was delivered: she addressed the victims. Even a state security procedure, it can be interpreted, is not only there to determine the guilt of the accused. It should and perhaps can also help heal wounds.
Many of those affected were scared to death, traumatized because they were suddenly attacked in the middle of their lives. Some are still unable to work today, struggling with fears and sleep problems: a young woman who missed Balliet’s shots on the street, a man and woman who were shot because they didn’t want to let her have her car, the Somali Balliet almost knocked down the lot on the run. Mertens finds words of sympathy for him, but it was not possible to prove to the accused that he wanted to kill him.
The president also speaks directly to the operator of the Kiez-Kiez-Döner, he was caught in the hail of bullets on the street when Balliet became involved in a shootout with the police. For a long time, the federal prosecution did not want to admit him as a co-plaintiff: “You were a victim, your life was in danger, Mr. Tekin,” Mertens says. “The problem is, we can’t prove that he didn’t even notice you.”
Very different with the murder of Kevin S., the day laborer painter who was waiting for his kebab in the cafeteria when Balliet’s explosive device missed the door. “You executed Kevin S. that day,” Mertens complains to the defendant, “incredibly cruel, cowardly and without a trace of human emotion.”
Kevin S. suffered from a mental and physical disability, his father had told us about his son through tears in court. The president has often shown control in this process, but now her voice almost fails: “Unlike you, Kevin S. did not retreat to his son’s room,” Mertens told Balliet, but he had his life in his own hands. taken: “Profession, soccer, friends, the defendant has not achieved all that in 27 years.”
“I have no words here to evaluate this objectively, as it is my task”
Mertens recalls how Balliet shot the young man crouching behind a refrigerator at point-blank range begging for his life. How he got back out to arm himself: “It would have had a chance to stop, but then it really started.” Mertens pauses for a moment, then says, “Mr. Balliet, I have no words, this to objectively assess what my work is like.” He had never prepared a written reason before, but here he had to force himself to write down the sentences, on almost 35 pages, “so you can keep your composure.”
It is true that the expert witness testified that the defendant suffered from a serious personality disorder, with paranoid, schizoid and self-confident traits. He had only attached absurd conspiracy theories in his children’s room. But there is no question of his guilt.
“They are dangerous to humanity,” Mertens turns back to the accused, who looks at them apparently indifferent. “We have to protect society from you,” the president tells him. If you don’t change your attitude, you will never be free again.
Balliet throws something red across the hall.
Finally, Mertens thanks everyone involved in the process, the security officers and the demonstration service, and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas.
The director is gathering her manuscript, when Balliet jumps up and without a word throws a long red object across the room, falling between the co-plaintiffs’ tables.
A brief shock, then it’s clear it was a rolled-up folder. The court officers fight the convict and remove him from the room.
