Mühlhausen (dpa/th) – There are delays in the Fretterode trial because of an attack on two journalists. The next day of the hearing planned for Thursday at the Mühlhausen district court had to be cancelled, a spokesman for the court said on Tuesday on request. The reason is the illness of a member of the responsible chamber. As a result, the public prosecutor’s office cannot hold their plea on this day as originally planned.
According to the current status, the trial is scheduled to continue on August 18th. Whether a representative of the public prosecutor’s office will then plead has not yet been finally clarified, it said. The process began in September.
The public prosecutor’s office in Mühlhausen accuses the two defendants of attacking two journalists in the Fretterode region in northern Thuringia in April 2018 without having been attacked by them beforehand. The accused initially followed the journalists with a car, who in turn had fled in a car. The two journalists were seriously injured in the attack.
Both defendants had already been assigned to the right-wing extremist scene in the past – and confirmed this themselves by providing information during the trial. The defendants had partially admitted to the crime at the start of the trial, but stated that they had acted in a kind of self-defense.
