German soldier, posing as Syrian refugee, sentenced to prison for plotting neo-Nazi terror attacks

A German court has sentenced a former soldier to five-and-a-half years’ imprisonment over the plotting of a far-right neo-Nazi terror attack on political figures while disguised as a Syrian refugee.

The 33-year-old Franco Albrecht, a former lieutenant in the German military, smuggled weapons and explosives from the army prior to his arrest in 2017, when he tried to retrieve a Nazi-era pistol that he hid in a toilet at Vienna’s International Airport. He was reportedly planning to launch attacks on MPs and cabinet ministers, including former Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, as well as on a prominent Jewish human rights activist.

During his trial, he admitted to the court that he deceived German authorities throughout the 2015-2016 influx of migrants and refugees into the country – primarily Syrians fleeing the conflict in Syria – by posing as a Christian fruit seller from Damascus named David Benjamin.

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He was able to attain shelter and welfare benefits from the State, despite speaking no Arabic and not being sufficiently required to prove his claimed Syrian identity.

At his sentencing at the Frankfurt state court on Friday, the presiding judge, Christoph Koller, stated that “the accused is guilty of planning a serious act of violence endangering the state”. During his trial, prosecutors initially demanded a prison term of six years and three months, but Albrecht’s lawyers had called for a suspended sentence based solely on weapons law violations as there was not sufficient evidence that he intended to use his false Syrian identity to blame his crimes on.

The case has shed light on neo-Nazi sympathies and views in the ranks of the German military, which have reportedly been growing in recent years. Germany’s former Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, acknowledged and warned of those sentiments last year, saying that the far-right and neo-Nazi elements within the armed forces are the biggest threat facing the country.

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