Prosecutor shot dead in German courtroom

A defendant in a courtroom in Dachau near Munich has shot dead a state prosecutor. The man was accused of failing to pay money he owed the social security system on behalf of his employees.

A state prosecutor was shot dead by a defendant in a courtroom in the southern German city of Dachau on Wednesday.

The court's judge was reading out the sentence for the suspect, 54-year-old Rudolf U., when the defendant pulled out a gun and fired at the judge. He missed, and then fired three shots directly at the 31-year-old prosecutor before two witnesses in the courtroom overpowered him.

The prosecutor, Tilman T., underwent emergency surgery at a hospital but died of his wounds. The judge was unharmed. The defendant and victim's last names are being withheld according to German privacy guidelines.

Munich prosecutors said they plan to charge Rudolf U., who has no prior convictions, with murder. State attorney Kristina Karbach told a press conference Wednesday evening that the suspect fired with a 6.35-caliber pistol that he had apparently obtained illegally.

A spokesman for the Bavarian Justice Ministry said there was no security checkpoint at the courthouse. The spokesman pointed out that there was a camera installed at the entrance as well as a security guard, but that "he cannot check everyone."

The defendant was an employer in the transport business who allegedly owed the state 44,000 euros in unpaid social security contributions for his employees. The judge was sentencing him to a one-year suspended sentence.

Walter Gross, chairman of the Bavarian Bar Association, said he expressed sympathy on behalf of his colleague's for the victim's family.

"We always have to keep in mind that our occupation carries a certain degree of risk," he told the dapd news agency.

The attack brought back the memory of a similar incident in 2009, when a man holding xenophobic views stabbed to death an Egyptian woman wearing a headscarf in a court in Dresden. In 1994, a man detonated a bomb in the western town of Euskirchen, killing seven people, including the judge.

(Published by DW - World - January 11, 2012)