On October 9, 2019, the Day of Atonement, 52 people were at prayer in the synagogue in Halle (Saale), in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Stephan Balliet, a 27-year-old German who lived in a village in the south of the state, came to the synagogue that day. By that afternoon two people in Halle were dead, others had been injured in the city and in a nearby village, and Balliet was under arrest.
The people he killed were Jana Lange and Kevin Schwarze. Neither was a member of the congregation he had come for. On December 21, 2020, after the largest criminal trial in the history of Saxony-Anhalt, the 1st State Security Senate of the Naumburg Higher Regional Court convicted him of murder in two cases, of attempted murder in a long series of further cases, of incitement to hatred and of other offenses. It imposed a life sentence, found the particular gravity of guilt that bars routine release after 15 years, and ordered preventive detention to follow. He did not appeal. The judgment against him became final eight days later.
The woman was a devoted follower of German popular music. She spent much of her time at concerts and collected the autographs of the performers she followed. She was a passerby with no connection to the service inside.
The young man was a passionate soccer fan. The court joined his murder to the attempted murder of four other people present.
The court counted the rest of the harm with the same care. It convicted Balliet of attempted murder of the 51 visitors to the synagogue, of five police officers and of two passersby, a driver and a further pedestrian in the city. Two more people, a resident of Wiedersdorf, a village in the town of Landsberg east of Halle, and his partner, were the victims of attempted murder linked to attempted robbery-extortion resulting in death and dangerous bodily harm; the woman was seriously injured. Two brothers in the same village were the victims of a particularly serious robbery-extortion. A pedestrian in Halle was injured by negligent bodily harm. Federal prosecutors put the total number of people against whom murder or attempted murder was charged at 68.
Balliet gave the outline of his life before October 2019 to the court himself. He told the senate on the first day of trial that he had grown up and still lived in a village in southern Saxony-Anhalt. He had finished secondary school with the Abitur, the qualification for university entrance, and had then done a shortened period of military service, about six months, in Lower Saxony. He began a university degree and broke it off, he said, because of illness. After that he lived, in his own description, without structure. He had no close friends, he told the court, had never belonged to any club or association, and was interested above all in the internet.
He had never been a member of any far-right organization; he had radicalized himself online. The federal prosecutors who charged him described the motive as antisemitic, racist and xenophobic, and the senate that opened the trial adopted that formulation in its own statement of the charges: he was accused of having set out, with that motive, to carry out a murderous attack on fellow citizens of the Jewish faith.
Balliet was arrested on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 9, 2019, the same day as the attack. The case did not stay with the state. The Federal Public Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe, whose office handles offenses that threaten the security of the state, took over the investigation early and on Thursday, October 10, announced that it was treating the killings as a far-right terrorist attack committed by a single perpetrator.
That Thursday evening Balliet was brought before the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice, who issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of murder in two cases and attempted murder in several more. A spokesman for the federal prosecutors said the next day that the suspect had given a statement lasting several hours before the judge and had confirmed an antisemitic and far-right motive. He was held in pretrial detention from then on.
The investigation ran through the winter. On April 23, 2020, the Federal Court of Justice, reviewing his continued detention, ordered that he remain in custody. A preliminary psychiatric assessment at that stage found no indication that his capacity to understand the wrongfulness of his acts, or to act on that understanding, had been absent when he committed them.
The indictment, dated April 16, 2020, and made public on April 21, ran to 121 pages and charged 13 offenses. It accused Balliet of murder in two cases and attempted murder in several cases against a total of 68 people, of dangerous bodily harm, attempted robbery-extortion resulting in death, particularly serious robbery-extortion, incitement to hatred and negligent bodily harm. It went to the 1st Criminal Senate of the Naumburg Higher Regional Court, sitting as the state security senate, the court that hears terrorism cases brought by the federal prosecutors in Saxony-Anhalt.
By then the state's officials could put early figures on the human cost. Four people had applied for benefits under the federal victims' compensation law, and ten were in treatment for trauma in December 2019. The state's justice ministry had opened a central contact point for victims at the start of 2020, and victim-support organizations, among them a Jewish welfare association, had been working with survivors and families since the attack.
On June 14, 2020, the senate admitted the indictment for trial, opened the main proceedings, ordered that Balliet remain in custody and admitted 40 people as co-plaintiffs. For reasons of security and space, the trial was set for the largest courtroom in the state, in the building of the Magdeburg Regional Court. Seventeen further hearing dates were fixed after the opening day. In custody before the trial began, Balliet made a failed attempt to escape at Pentecost 2020 and was then moved to another prison in Saxony-Anhalt.
The trial opened on July 21, 2020, about two hours later than planned, after long lines of spectators and journalists had formed outside. Balliet was brought in under guard. The presiding judge warned him on the first day that he could be removed from the courtroom, and over the following months he was cut off several times when he tried to use his statements to the court to repeat his views. By the opening the number of co-plaintiffs had grown to 43, and 147 witnesses were on the list. The court had scheduled 18 hearing days through mid-October. It would need many more.
The senate also made a decision that had never been taken in a German criminal court. Using a provision of the Courts Constitution Act that allows recordings of proceedings of outstanding historical importance for academic and historical purposes, it ordered the entire trial recorded on audio, for historical and scholarly use.
Balliet admitted the acts at the outset. He told the court that he had intended to kill the people in the synagogue, and he did not deny the deaths in the city. The questions left for the court were how each act was to be classified in law, how many people each count covered, and what sentence followed. The survivors from the synagogue, the people from the restaurant, injured police officers and passersby all testified. Some of the co-plaintiffs used the hearings to describe what the day had done to them, and at least one survivor urged the court to take more seriously the question of whom he had been connected with online.
On September 15, 2020, the twelfth day, four survivors testified, as did a relative of the young man killed in the restaurant. By the end of the trial the senate had heard 79 witnesses and 15 experts.
The central expert evidence came on November 4, 2020. The forensic psychiatric expert told the senate that Balliet had a complex personality disorder with features of autism and signs of paranoid thinking. The disorder, he said, was not pathological in the legal sense and did not affect Balliet's ability to tell right from wrong or to act on that knowledge. He had planned the offense rationally. In the terms of the German criminal code the psychiatrist found him fully criminally responsible, with no ground to reduce his culpability.
The evidence closed on the morning of November 18, 2020, the 21st day of the trial. The federal prosecutors delivered their closing statement the same day. They asked the senate to convict Balliet of murder, attempted murder, incitement to hatred and attempted robbery-extortion, to impose a life sentence, to find the particular gravity of guilt and to order preventive detention once the sentence had been served. By the end of the trial 45 survivors and bereaved relatives were taking part as co-plaintiffs, represented by 23 lawyers, and their lawyers gave closing statements of their own. The defense argued that the counts covering the people inside the synagogue should not be treated as attempted murder.
The senate gave judgment on Monday, December 21, 2020, on the 26th day of the trial, in the Magdeburg courtroom. Balliet showed no visible reaction as the verdict was read.
The convictions, in the order the court announced them, were: murder in two cases, one of them in legal unity with attempted murder in four further cases; attempted murder in 51 cases joined in legal unity; attempted murder in five cases joined in legal unity; attempted murder in two cases joined in legal unity; attempted murder in two cases; attempted murder in two cases, each in legal unity with attempted robbery-extortion resulting in death and dangerous bodily harm; particularly serious robbery-extortion; negligent bodily harm in legal unity with intentionally endangering road traffic and with a prohibited motor vehicle race; and incitement to hatred in two cases joined in legal unity. The court explained the order count by count. The two murders were those of the two people killed in Halle, the second joined to the attempted murder of the guests and staff of the restaurant. The 51 counts were the visitors to the synagogue; the five were the police officers; the remaining counts covered the passersby and the driver in the city, the two people wounded in Wiedersdorf, the brothers in the same village, the pedestrian in Halle and statements inciting hatred that he made when he arrived in the city.
For all of this the senate imposed an aggregate sentence of life imprisonment. It rejected the defense's argument on the synagogue counts and acquitted him of the remaining charges. It found the particular gravity of guilt, and it ordered his placement in preventive detention.
German law gives the parties a week to lodge an appeal on points of law with the Federal Court of Justice. Balliet lodged none. On December 29, 2020, the Naumburg court announced that the judgment was final as far as he was concerned.
Two of the co-plaintiffs did appeal. One was a restaurant operator who argued that Balliet had also tried to kill him. The other was the pedestrian injured in Halle, who argued the same. The senate had found neither attempt proved and had convicted Balliet only of negligent bodily harm in the pedestrian's case. A court spokesman said at the time that the appeals could not change the overall sentence. The Federal Court of Justice rejected both in a decision made public in April 2022, and found no legal error in the Naumburg judgment. With that the whole of the 2020 judgment was final.
Balliet has been in custody since the afternoon of October 9, 2019. On December 12, 2022, serving his life sentence in a prison in Saxony-Anhalt, he took two prison officers hostage in an attempt to escape, and on February 27, 2024, Criminal Chamber 1 of the Stendal Regional Court convicted him of hostage-taking and an offense under the arms law and sentenced him to seven years. The Federal Court of Justice rejected the prosecution's and the defense's appeals against that judgment in July 2025, and it too is final.
The sentence in Naumburg is the most severe a German court can impose, and each of its three parts does a different job. A life sentence in Germany does not necessarily mean imprisonment until death. Under section 57a of the criminal code, the remainder of a life sentence can be suspended on probation once 15 years have been served, if release can be justified in light of the public's interest in safety and if the particular gravity of the offender's guilt does not require continued enforcement.
The senate's finding of particular gravity of guilt closes that route at the 15-year mark. As the Naumburg court explained in its statement on the day of judgment, the chamber that one day rules on Balliet's release will have to take into account that the trial court found his guilt particularly grave. The finding does not set a fixed higher minimum term. It means release after 15 years cannot be expected.
Preventive detention, ordered under section 66 of the criminal code, reaches beyond the sentence itself. If Balliet's sentence is one day served or suspended, he is to remain confined in a suitable institution for as long as the legal conditions for preventive detention continue to exist: above all, an overall assessment of the offender and his acts showing that, because of a propensity to commit serious offenses that cause grave psychological or physical harm to victims, he is a danger to the public. Those conditions must be reviewed every year, and every nine months once ten years of preventive detention have been served.
The court that tried him was also a product of the kind of case it was. Because the Federal Public Prosecutor General took the investigation over as an offense against the security of the state, the trial went not to an ordinary regional court but to the state security senate of the state's higher regional court, sitting in the first instance. Its judgment could be challenged only by an appeal on points of law to the Federal Court of Justice, the remedy Balliet chose not to use and that two of the co-plaintiffs, as joint parties to the prosecution, used and lost.
In the 2024 prosecution, the Stendal court declined the prosecution's request to order preventive detention a second time. It reasoned that the Naumburg judgment, with its life sentence and its order for preventive detention, already met the public's need for protection, and the Federal Court of Justice found that reasoning sound.
Balliet admitted the acts, and the facts of the killings were not in dispute at trial. The disputes concerned the reach of the counts. The senate acquitted him of part of the charges, and in at least two cases it declined to find attempted murder where the people affected believed he had tried to kill them; the Federal Court of Justice upheld those findings.
At least one survivor argued during the trial that the investigation should have looked further into the online milieu in which he radicalized. The prosecution and the court treated him as a lone actor who belonged to no organization, and no one else has been charged in connection with the attack.
The diagnosis given at trial, a complex personality disorder with autistic features, was the court-appointed psychiatrist's. The senate relied on his conclusion that it did not reduce Balliet's criminal responsibility.
October 9, 2019: On Yom Kippur, two people are killed in Halle (Saale); others are injured in Halle and Wiedersdorf. Balliet is arrested that afternoon.
October 10, 2019: The Federal Public Prosecutor General classifies the attack as far-right terrorism. That evening the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice issues an arrest warrant, and Balliet gives a statement confirming his motive.
April 16, 2020: The federal prosecutors indict him before the Naumburg Higher Regional Court; the indictment is announced on April 21.
April 23, 2020: The Federal Court of Justice orders his continued pretrial detention.
June 14, 2020: The state security senate admits the indictment, opens the main proceedings and admits 40 co-plaintiffs.
July 21, 2020: The trial opens in Magdeburg; Balliet admits the acts.
September 15, 2020: Survivors and a bereaved relative testify on the twelfth day.
November 4, 2020: The court-appointed psychiatrist finds him fully criminally responsible.
November 18, 2020: The evidence closes on the 21st day; the federal prosecutors ask for life, particular gravity of guilt and preventive detention.
December 21, 2020: The senate convicts him of murder in two cases, attempted murder in many cases, incitement to hatred and other offenses, and imposes life imprisonment with particular gravity of guilt and preventive detention.
December 29, 2020: The Naumburg court announces that Balliet has not appealed and that the judgment is final as to him; two co-plaintiffs appeal.
April 2022: The Federal Court of Justice rejects the co-plaintiffs' appeals.
December 12, 2022: Hostage-taking in a prison in Saxony-Anhalt.
May 3, 2023: The Naumburg prosecutor general's office announces a new indictment.
January 25, 2024: The second trial opens before the Stendal Regional Court, sitting in Magdeburg.
February 27, 2024: Convicted of hostage-taking and an offense under the arms law; seven years.
July 15, 2025: The Federal Court of Justice's rejection of both appeals against the Stendal judgment is announced; that judgment is final.