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09/06/2010

It has been almost a year since the brutal attack which shocked and outraged Germany. Businessman Dominik Brunner (50) was violently assaulted after trying to defend children from two aggressive youths on a train.

On Monday a court in the southern city of Munich sentenced the two teenagers, giving Markus Schiller, 19, nine years and 10 months in a juvenile detention center for murder. His accomplice, 18-year-old Sebastian Leibinger, was sentenced to seven years for bodily harm resulting in death.

"The perpetrators wanted to take revenge on Brunner for interfering," Judge Reinhold Baier said.

The court heard how Brunner, a passenger on a commuter train, had stepped in and confronted the two youths who were trying to bully children into handing over €15 euros ($19). Shortly after, he left the train with the frightened children at a station and contacted the police.

Tough Sentences

Schiller and Leibinger followed the group off the train and began kicking and punching Brunner. The commuter suffered 22 serious injuries as they repeatedly battered and kicked his body and head.

During the 12-day trial further details emerged in the case, including that Brenner had struck the two teenagers first, apparently in self-defense. It also emerged that his death was caused by a heart attack brought on by the beating, rather than the injuries themselves.

But Markus Schiller was given the toughest sentence possible for a youth offender because witnesses said he had continued to attack Brunner even when he was lying wounded on the ground. A leading German police union, the DPoIG, was quick to praise the verdict, saying it sent a strong signal condemning such behavior.

'Killer Pack'

Amid the emotional national response to the case, the media mourned Brunner as a "fallen hero" and the mass-circulation tabloid Bild called the teenagers a "killer pack." Prior to his March resignation, German President Horst Köhler posthumously awarded Brunner the Federal Cross of Merit for civil courage.

During the mourning and soul-searching in the weeks following Brunner's death, a number of politicians called for a tougher line on youth crime. Hans-Ulrich Pfaffmann, who heads the Munich arm of the Social Democratic Party, urged that the perpetrators be given "zero tolerance" and punished "to the full extent of the law".

Bavarian Justice Minister Beate Merk called for adjustments to the juvenile criminal code, raising the maximum penalty from 10 to 15 years. She also said that 18-year-old offenders should be subject to adult criminal law, rather than youth law. As the law currently stands, a person must be 21 to face adult punishment. There were calls for more video surveillance in public places.

Other politicians asked how it was possible that passengers on the busy train simply ignored the noisy confrontation, something CDU politician Rupert Scholz described as the "unspeakable culture of looking the other way."

But on Monday, the Domink-Brunner Foundation, a charity set up to promote non-violence among young people in memory of the victim, declined to comment on the sentences.

"We try, as far as it is possible right now, to keep our eyes focused on the future, in order to prevent future acts of violence," the head of the foundation said.