Germany jails man for life over deadly Munich car-ramming

Prosecutors said during the trial that Farhad N., an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, acted out of ‘religious motivation’

A German court on Thursday handed an Afghan man a life sentence for a car-ramming attack in Munich last year which killed a two-year-old girl and her mother and left dozens injured.

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 25-year-old Farhad N. 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., who was 24 at the time, drove a Mini Cooper into a 1,400-strong trade union march, hurling a 37-year-old woman and her young daughter through the air for 10 metres.