Afghan jailed for life for deadly Munich car-ramming

BERLIN: 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 meters.

They sustained severe head injuries from which they died several days later.

An eyewitness quoted by the prosecution during the trial described people "being flung left and right, like a bowling alley".

The vehicle came to a halt after 23 meters (75 feet) "because its front wheels lost contact with the ground due to people lying in front of and underneath the car", according to the charge sheet.

Online radicalization 

Prosecutors had said during the trial that Farhad N. acted out of a "religious motivation" and had uttered the words "Allahu akbar", meaning "God is the greatest", after the car rampage.

However, he is not believed to have been part of any organized jihadist movement such as the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

His defense team had asked for him to be sent to a psychiatric facility despite court-appointed experts determining that his mental health problems did not reduce his degree of responsibility.

Farhad N. arrived in Germany unaccompanied in 2016, when he was 15. His asylum request was rejected but he was able to stay in the country and find work.

Police said Farhad N. worked in security and was heavily engaged in fitness training and bodybuilding.

He is thought to have been radicalized in the months leading up to the attack by consuming content online from radical Afghan preachers.

The attack came just days before the February 2025 general election which saw the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieve its best-ever result of over 20 percent.

The centre-right CDU/CSU came first and its leader Friedrich Merz became chancellor, promising to take a tougher line on immigration to stave off the AfD's rise.

However, since then the CDU/CSU has slumped while the AfD has established a steady lead in opinion polls.