In Leipzig, a city in eastern Germany with about 600,000 inhabitants, there were violent clashes between extreme left-wing demonstrators and the forces of order for two consecutive days: the protests concerned the sentence of five years and three months in prison Lisa E, a far-left activist (whose surname has not been disclosed) who was arrested in 2020 on charges of having participated in some violent attacks against neo-Nazi militants.
The case of Lina E has long been known in Germany, where right-wing political extremism is believed to be gaining strength and where last December 25 right-wing extremists – including a member of the old German nobility, army and military officers police and a former parliamentarian – had been arrested on suspicion of planning a coup.
Lina E was doomed Wednesday along with three other activists accused of being part of a criminal organization and other crimes, linked to attacks carried out between 2018 and 2020. In the case of Lina E, who had in fact been detained for two and a half years, the judge ruled that she will serve the rest of her prison sentence only if his appeal is rejected.
Clashes over Lina E’s sentencing took place on Saturday and Sunday night: police said protesters blocked roads, set fires and threw stones at officers and their vehicles: Sunday, after the clashes, police said a total of about 50 agents were injured, an unknown number of demonstrators and that about thirty of these were arrested.
Lina E was part of a far-left group that later became known as “hammer band” for the attacks carried out precisely with hammers, as well as with iron bars and baseball bats, against members of neo-Nazi organizations.
One of the attacks at the center of Lina E’s conviction was carried out in 2019, when the group to which she belonged attacked the Bull’s Eye, a club in Eisenach, in central Germany, notoriously frequented by neo-Nazis: the group had beaten the owner with hammers and truncheons, and attacked him again a few weeks later. The owner, known as Leon R, was later arrested in a German police operation against neo-Nazi militants in Germany.
In another attack, carried out in 2020, a group of neo-Nazis were severely beaten as they returned from a rally commemorating the bombing of Dresden by Nazi Germany during WWII. accomplished from the US and the UK. The beating had involved about fifteen people: several people among those beaten had suffered serious injuries.
The date of the verdict for Lina E had been known for some time: several groups of far-left activists, who considered her eventual conviction an implicit legitimization of neo-Nazi positions, had been gathering support for a demonstration for weeks. The day of the sentence was indicated as Tag X“day x”, a indicate a moment in the future deemed for some reason decisive or crucial, and the motto of the organizers was a phrase that could be translated more or less as “Let’s fight together: defend the autonomous anti-fascists, in spite of everything”.
Lina E’s conviction actually provoked very intense reactions: in the courtroom, a few moments after the judge pronounced the sentence, several activists present in the courtroom covered their faces, exhibited writings such as “Freedom for all anti-fascists” and a hundred supporters of the defendants began to applaud them.
The demonstrations had been organized in various cities: both on Wednesday and in the days immediately following they had taken place a Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, among others. In Leipzig, local authorities had banned a march scheduled for Saturday because they thought it likely could escalate into clashes. The demonstrators gathered anyway: a Reuters a local police spokesman said there were around 1,500, many of them “prone to violence”. There is no news about severity of the injuries sustained by police officers and demonstrators after the clashes.
Lina E’s condemnation has also provoked very harsh reactions on the right: in particular from some exponents of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, second which the sentence imposed on Lina E was too light. Others said they were annoyed by the judge’s decision to leave the woman free until a possible conviction on appeal, arguing that it is an implicit legitimization of the use of violence against the extreme right.