By DPA
Oschatz (Germany) : A 23-year-old man has been jailed for eight months for leading a racist mob that beat up and chased eight Indian men in the eastern German town of Muegeln last summer.
The court in the town of Oschatz Tuesday rejected a proposal by prosecutors to suspend the term, saying Frank D. must go to prison as a “deterrent” to others and there were no legal grounds for leniency.
“The defendant played a leading role in this,” said Judge Klaus Denk, convicting him of incitement to racial hatred, a serious crime under German law, along with causing damage to property.
“The courts will not tolerate this kind of violence. If we turn a blind eye to this, anything goes. There had been hate and fury in the air, and if a few brave policemen on the spot had not resolutely intervened, the situation might have become nastier and turned into a racial lynching,” the judge said.
The attack by about 50 men during a town festival made headlines round the world. Three other Germans have been fined for their role in the violence. Prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to charge four further suspects.
The mob chased the terrified Indians across a street from the festival and broke windows at a pizza parlour where they took refuge.
Frank, who is an excavator driver, had earlier admitted assault but denied any racist motive or damaging property in the early Aug 19 clash.
“Emotions were running high,” Frank told the court in Oschatz, 10 km north of Muegeln.
The accused said he pursued the Indians because one of his friends had been injured with a knife during a brawl, in which both Indians and Germans had reportedly been involved, on a dance-floor at the festival.
He admitted throwing a metal grating through the window of the pizzeria where the Indians sought refuge after being chased, but he denied uttering racist phrases during the rampage.
However, other witnesses quoted the racist slurs they heard and described Frank as egging the others on.
“I’m quite sure it was him,” said Amarjit Singh, 35, manager of the pizzeria and one of the victims. “We were scared to death.”
The incident left 14 people injured, among them the eight Indians and two of the policemen, mainly with bruises, cuts, black eyes and shock.
Singh’s legal counsel, Swantje Schmitz-Grubert, said she was satisfied with the sentence.
“It ought to serve as a deterrent,” the Dresden lawyer commented outside the courtroom later. She said Singh was still receiving counselling from a victim-support agency over his ordeal and had not fully got over it.
A youth, 18, was last week given a fine in court of 600 euros ($900). Two other Germans have received summary fines of 1,500 and 2,625 euros, but one of them, 22, has appealed and is to be heard in January.
Frank is entitled to appeal Tuesday’s verdict and sentence.
Reports of the attack caused outrage in Germany and India. The incident provoked soul searching in Germany about a long series of racist incidents, mainly in the eastern states that once formed communist East Germany.
Interior Ministry statistics released last month showed the number of victims of far-right crime in Germany was up more than 25 percent in the first nine months of 2007.
Prosecutors in the city of Leipzig said they were still investigating the Muegeln dance-tent brawl and treating this as a separate incident, with testimony about it contradictory.