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Airport shooter gets life

February 10, 2012

A German court has sentenced a Kosovo-born man to life in prison for killing two US soldiers and wounding three more last March at Frankfurt airport. Defense lawyers have said they will appeal the sentence.

https://p.dw.com/p/141Th
Arid Uka, in court, his face obscured
Image: dapd

A court in Frankfurt on Friday has sentenced a 22-year-old man to life in prison for killing two US soldiers at Frankfurt Airport a year ago, a crime labeled the first successful militant Islamist attack on German soil.

Arid Uka, a 22-year-old man born in Kosovo who grew up in Frankfurt, opened fire on a bus full of unarmed American soldiers at Frankfurt Airport on March 2, 2011. Two of the soldiers were killed and another two were seriously injured.

The high regional court of Hesse found him guilty of two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. The trial began in August last year.

The two victims were Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden, 25, from South Carolina, and Airman 1st Class Zachary R. Cuddeback, 21, from Virginia.

Prosecutors said Uka intended to kill as many people as possible, based on testimony that he only stopped firing after his gun jammed and he was overpowered.

Appeal pending

Federal prosecutor Jochen Weingart had requested the maximum sentence - life in prison without the possibility of parole. He argued that Uka was a militant Islamist who sought to wage a holy war.

The judge cited aggravated circumstances when giving the verdict, meaning that Uka is likely to spend at least 18 years behind bars - most people sentenced to life in Germany serve 15 years before being eligible for parole.

Uka's defense lawyer Jens Jörg Hoffmann, who asked for his age, confession and difficult upbringing to be taken into account during the trial, said after the verdict that he would appeal against the severity of the sentence.

"We have to appeal," Hoffmann told Reuters. "We think it was not a jihaidst attack, it was rage. He ran amok."

acb/msh (AP, dpa)