By
The Associated Press
HALLE, Germany - A German court convicted three neo-Nazis of beating an African immigrant to death and handed down tough prison sentences yesterday in an attempt to signal that a "long chain of attacks" on foreigners here must stop.
The state court sentenced Enrico Hilprecht, 24, to the maximum of life in prison. His two 16-year-old co-defendants, Christian Richter and Frank Miethbauer, were each given sentences of nine years - one year less than the maximum allowed for juveniles.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called the decision "a suitable verdict for a heinous crime."
The case offered a glimpse into Germany's violent skinhead scene: fueled by beer and illegal racist rock music, it directs rage at foreigners and often revolves around the decaying communist-era housing developments that dot the country's east.
It was in a park in the eastern city of Dessau that the three men brutally beat and kicked 39-year-old Alberto Adriano in the head on June 11. Adriano died three days later, leaving behind a wife and three children.
Reading the verdict yesterday, Judge Albrecht Hennig said the court concluded that the three defendants killed Adriano solely because of his skin color. He said none of the three cared whether Adriano would survive the beating.
"It was the latest in the long chain of attacks to which we must put an end," Hennig said.
"Animals show mercy to opponents lying on the ground, but rightist extremists apparently do not," he said. "They are pitiless, without mercy."
The defendants looked stone-faced as the verdict and sentences were read. Richter, who had grinned at one point during the reading of the indictment last week, briefly blinked away tears. Defense lawyers said they were considering whether to appeal.
Schroeder, conceding Germans hadn't paid enough attention to the growing problem of right-wing violence, planned a visit today to a makeshift memorial marking the spot where the Mozambican man was attacked.
The previously unscheduled stop on Schroeder's two-week tour of eastern Germany is an attempt to demonstrate a renewed government commitment to fighting resurgent neo-Nazi attacks that have left at least three dead this year - triggering a broad political debate.
According to government statistics, 129 xenophobic offenses were registered in June, 29 more than in the same month last year. That included 28 violent right-wing attacks that left one person dead and 26 injured.
In a ZDF television interview yesterday, Schroeder said Germany had "too often simply ignored problems in this area, or dealt with them only sporadically."
He reiterated his call for toughness by police and the courts, better job and training prospects for "young hangers-on" to pull them out of the neo-Nazi scene and courage by citizens to stand up against extremism.
Adriano's widow, Angelika, was not in court yesterday for the verdict. She decided to stay away after receiving death threats, said Razak Minhel, a liaison with the foreigner community in Dessau, where she lives with the couple's three children.
Albino Lemos, a diplomat from the Mozambican Embassy in Berlin who attended the sentencing, said the German government had woken up slowly to the racism problem. He welcomed the verdict.
"This will put a bit of fear into those young people," he said.
But Hennig noted that around the country, neo-Nazi attacks were being reported nearly daily over the last few weeks. In the northern town of Luebeck, two neo-Nazis suspected of kicking and beating a 33-year-old African man appeared in court yesterday - and offered to pay the man $1,400. They face charges of causing bodily harm, racial incitement and slurs, but prosecutors said a judge released them without bail after they expressed remorse and offered damages. Prosecutors were reviewing the decision to see if they would accept it.
And in another western city, police arrested two suspects yesterday in an arson attack on a home for asylum-seekers in Stuttgart.
A veteran Nazi hunter said Germany can do more to fight the revival of Adolf Hitler's master-race ideals among youths, a phenomenon not limited to the formerly communist east.
Willi Dressen, who retires today as head of a special German prosecutor's office that has tracked Nazi war criminals since 1958, said the German legal system has been too lenient with Nazi war crimes suspects - just as it has been with neo-Nazis. He urged courts to consistently impose harsh sentences on right-wing extremists.
"They must be taken from the streets, that's most important," Dressen told The Associated Press by telephone from Ludwigsburg, the southwestern city where his office is based.
