- The Federal Criminal Court has sentenced two Basel residents to prison sentences of 60 and 74 months.
- It found her guilty of carrying out an explosive attack on a private house in the Bruderholz district of Basel in 2022.
- They also tried to buy explosives.
The explosive attack in the Bruderholz district at the end of March 2022 caused property damage totaling 170,000 francs. Nobody got hurt.
In the summer of the same year, the two men also traveled to Stuttgart, Germany, to purchase two kilograms of plastic explosives. They had actually also planned to buy a weapon. The alleged seller was a German investigator.
The Federal Criminal Court found the 25- and soon-to-be 28-year-old men guilty of endangerment by explosives and toxic gases with criminal intent and of causing serious damage to property. In addition, it considers the offense of continuing to supply explosives and poisonous gases to be fulfilled – but only in the form of an unsuitable attempt, as the investigator gave them dummies.
“Unscrupulous and greedy”
The criminal chamber assumes considerable culpability. She sees the younger man as the planner and the 28-year-old as the person responsible for executing it. Only together could they have carried out the attack in Bruderholz and organized the explosives for further attacks.
The presiding judge described the culpability as significant. The conduct in Bruderholz was “particularly unscrupulous” and pursued with “considerable criminal energy,” based on “expressed greed.” The perpetrators’ goal was to intimidate wealthy families or individuals with attacks and extort millions from them.
The younger man was sentenced to a longer prison sentence mainly because of the revocation of a previous conviction. In 2020, he was sentenced to a conditional prison sentence by the Basel-Landschaft criminal court for attempted blackmail and preparatory acts for a robbery.
Federal prosecutor satisfied
Because he committed the crimes currently being assessed during the four-year probationary period, the criminal chamber gave him a poor prognosis, meaning that the Basel sentence can be revoked. The convicts will be given credit for the previous 518 days of imprisonment.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office (BA) said it was satisfied with the verdict because the court largely followed its charges. She had called for prison sentences of eight or ten years. However, she will wait for the written reasons for the judgment in order to be able to better classify the decision and then decide on how to proceed.