A10 WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020
NBERLIN — A young German
man charged with killing two peo-
ple last fall after his plan to blast
his way into a synagogue filled
with Jews observing Yom Kippur
failed, told a court on Tuesday that
he was inspired by the white su-
premacist who had killed 51 wor-
shipers at two mosques in New
Zealand earlier last year.
Stephan Balliet, 28, is charged
with two counts of murder in the
deaths of a 40-year-old woman,
who spoke up as Mr. Balliet
planted explosives around the en-
trance to the synagogue in the
eastern city of Halle, and a 20-
year-old man he thought was a
Muslim. He is also charged with
68 counts of attempted murder
and other crimes for the attack on
Oct. 9. If convicted of murder, Mr.
Balliet faces life in prison.
The attack raised alarm that
even Germany, a country that
prides itself on its culture of hu-
mility and atonement for the
crimes of the Nazis, is not immune
to the international influence of
far-right extremism and white su-
premacy that has incited ram-
pages from New Zealand to Pitts-
burgh. In 2019, crimes against
Jews in Germany reached their
highest level since the country
started tracking them in 2001.
Mr. Balliet was flown to the
courtroom in Magdeburg hours
before the trial opened. He wore a
protective vest, and his hands and
feet were in handcuffs and shack-
les similar to those of defendants
who’ve faced terrorism charges.
The trial had been moved from a
smaller court in Naumburg to ac-
commodate all of the participants
and the news media.
Dressed all in black, his face
largely expressionless, Mr. Balliet
at first gave only curt responses
when the presiding judge, Ursula
Mertens, pressed him for details
about his past, his family and his
personal life, German media re-
ported. “That’s not important,” he
responded again and again.
What was important to him was
the year 2015, when Germany wel-
comed more than one million refu-
gees. He said that was when he de-
cided to turn his back on a society
he described as “infiltrated” byMuslims and Black people, whom
he used a racist slur to describe,
eliciting a rebuke from Judge
Mertens.
“I will not accept the verbal
abuse of people in this courtroom
and have the authority to remove
you,” she told him. “I will not toler-
ate further crimes in the court-
room by you slandering people.”
The racist slurs and derogatory
language Mr. Balliet repeatedly
sought to use echoed the hateful
rants denouncing feminists and
immigrants heard on a video he
made of his attack using a camera
mounted on a helmet. He broad-
cast his remarks live to an online
chat platform. In the 35-minute
video, which Mr. Balliet said was
inspired by the New Zealand mas-
sacres that were also
livestreamed by the perpetrator,
he declared, “The root of all these
problems is the Jew.”
Kai Lohse, a federal prosecutor,
confirmed that Mr. Balliet blamed
Jews for the problems he identi-
fied in German society. “He de-
scribed Jews as rats that had to be
lured out of the synagogue” to be
killed, Mr. Lohse told the court.Prosecutors have found no indica-
tion the attacker was part of a
larger network beyond the virtual
world where he drew inspiration.
Mr. Balliet largely confessed, in
the courtroom and earlier to pros-ecutors, to the charges against
him, including the two counts of
murder. His only remorse, he said,
was that both people he killed
were white.
Dozens of the 52 people whohad gathered for services in Hal-
le’s Humboldt Street Synagogue
last year on Yom Kippur, the ho-
liest day in the Jewish calendar,
were among those who packed the
courtroom on Tuesday.German Man Stands Trial for Murder
In Planned Synagogue Attack in 2019
By MELISSA EDDYA man killed two people after failing to enter the Humboldt Street Synagogue in Halle, Germany.LAETITIA VANCON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESCAIRO — Three decades ago, a
little-known army officer named
Omar Hassan al-Bashir seized
power in Sudan, ushering in a long
period of brutal rule that would
push the sprawling African coun-
try into a series of destabilizing
wars, cripple its economy and re-
sult in humiliating international
isolation.
Now Mr. al-Bashir is being
called to account for his actions.
The autocrat, 76, who was
ousted last year following street
protests, was led into a courtroom
in Khartoum on Tuesday to stand
trial for his role in the bloodless
1989 coup that toppled the demo-
cratically elected government of
Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.
Also in the dock were 27 of Mr. al-
Bashir’s most senior officials, in-
cluding former vice presidents,
ministers, governors and military
officers.
Mr. al-Bashir, who was sen-
tenced to two years imprisonment
last year on separate corruption
charges, faces the death penalty if
convicted.
Armed policemen wielding ba-
tons and tear gas canisters stood
guard outside the courthouse,
where the accused were led into
cages for a brief hearing. Dozens
of relatives gathered outside the
building, jeering and shouting slo-
gans including “God is great!”
The prosecution is a rare in-
stance of a dictator being forced to
answer for the putsch that cata-
pulted him to power — even if in
Mr. al-Bashir’s case, a key accom-
plice has already evaded justice.
The Islamist cleric Hassan al-
Turabi, widely seen as the true ar-
chitect of the 1989 coup, and the
power behind Mr. al-Bashir for
many years until they had a fall-
ing out, died in 2016 without facing
trial.
For Mr. al-Bashir, this is one
prosecution among many. During
last year’s corruption trial, he ad-
mitted taking $90 million in bribes
from Saudi Arabia’s rulers. But
the gravest charges have yet to
come before a court.
For over a decade, the Interna-
tional Criminal Court at The
Hague has sought Mr. al-Bashir
over his role in the conflict in the
western region of Darfur, where
Sudanese troops and allied mili-
tias killed, pillaged and raped in a
yearslong campaign of ethnically
driven violence that resulted in
several hundred thousand deaths.
The Hague court indicted Mr.
al-Bashir a decade ago on charges
of genocide and crimes against
humanity, and charged other sen-
ior figures including the former
defense minister, Abdel-Rahim
Muhammad Hussein, who stood
trial alongside Mr. al-Bashir on
Tuesday.
Although Sudan’s transitional
government, which is jointly led
by civilian and military leaders,
indicated earlier this year that it
was ready to send Mr. al-Bashir to
The Hague, there has been little
sign of that happening. Instead,
the new administration has ap-
peared to shy away from a trial on
Darfur, probably because its own
leaders might also face accusa-
tions.
Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, a
powerful figure in the transitional
government, leads the paramili-
tary Rapid Support Forces, a
group linked to some of the worst
atrocity accusations in Darfur.
When Mr. al-Bashir, a brigade
commander, took over in 1989, the
country was sinking into decline.The army was battling a tenacious
uprising in the south, and Mr. al-
Mahdi’s elected government was
unpopular and beleaguered.
After he seized power, Mr. al-
Bashir suspended the Parliament
and other state institutions,
closed Khartoum airport and an-
nounced the coup over the radio.
Later, he embarked on a vicious
purge of potential rivals, imposedIslamic law, and introduced harsh
laws that severely restricted free-
doms for Sudanese, especially for
women.
It quickly became clear that the
ideological drive for the putsch
came from a small group of Islam-
ists led by Mr. al-Turabi, an eru-
dite, Sorbonne-educated cleric
who dreamed of leading a Pan-
Arab Islamist renaissance. Mr. al-Bashir had a reputation as a mal-
leable, less sophisticated figure.
“Bashir was the frontman but
the Islamists were more power-
ful,” said Alex de Waal, a professor
at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University,
and an expert on Sudan. “They
manipulated him.”
But Mr. al-Bashir outwitted the
ideologues in a series of powerstruggles that ended with Mr. al-
Turabi’s imprisonment in 1999,
leaving Mr. al-Bashir as Sudan’s
unchallenged ruler.
Sudan was home to Osama bin
Laden until 1996, when under
American pressure Mr. al-Bashir
was forced to expel the Qaeda
leader. Later, Mr. al-Bashir soft-
ened his Islamist fervor in favor of
repairing relations with Sudan’s
neighbors and, in 2005, striking a
landmark peace deal with south-
ern rebels that led to independ-
ence for South Sudan in 2011.
Mr. al-Bashir’s iron grip col-
lapsed in April 2019 when, after
months of street protests trig-
gered by the price of bread, his
own army lieutenants decided his
rule had become untenable and
ousted him from power.
Mr. al-Bashir has dismissed the
charges over the 1989 coup as po-
litically motivated — “a political
trial par excellence,” one of his
lawyers told reporters in Decem-
ber — and footage of Tuesday’s
proceedings broadcast on state
TV focused on the judge and did
not show the ousted autocrat in
the packed courtroom. For many
Sudanese, though, it was also
striking to see the former vice
presidents Ali Osman Taha and
Bakri Hassan Saleh on trial.
Without hearing statements or
arguments, the judge adjourned
the trial until Aug. 11, when he said
it would reconvene in a larger
courtroom with more space for
relatives and the defendants.By DECLAN WALSH3 Decades After His Coup, Sudan’s Former Ruler Is Held to Account
MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALLAH/REUTERSEBRAHIM HAMID/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESSudanese police officers corral-
ling protesting civilians outside
the court where ousted Presi-
dent Omar Hassan al-Bashir,
left, faces charges of leading a
military coup in 1989.An autocrat faces
the death penalty
if convicted.