With a burning torch, five young men are said to have tried to kill a Roma family in a caravan. The projectile misses the vehicle in which a mother lies with her baby. Now the men are on trial.
In the process of the arson attack on a Roma family almost a year ago, all five defendants stood before the district court in Ulm and apologized. Attempted murder is accused of men.
According to the indictment, they were said to have thrown a torch from a moving car onto the family's caravan on May 24, 2019, which was standing in a meadow in Erbach (Alb-Donau-Kreis). In the vehicle, which was narrowly missed, was a sleeping woman with her nine-month-old son.
"I am deeply ashamed of this action," said one of the defendants at the start of the trial. He and his friends never intended to hurt anyone. That is why he did not throw the burning torch on the caravan, but targeted it next to it. "We were stupid and didn't think about the consequences," said one of the accused.
They just wanted to scare the family. The German men, who were 17 to 20 years old at the time of the crime, were arrested in July. The investigators do not rule out a racist motive.
The procedure started due to corona-related distance rules in a hall in the Ulmer Kornhaus under stricter security conditions. Activists protested against racism in front of the trial building. "The increasing anti-Gypsyism in Germany and in Europe is very worrying for us," said the chairman of the regional association of German Sinti and Roma, Daniel Strauß, before the trial.