A German army lieutenant who posed as a Syrian refugee has been sentenced to 5½ years in prison after he was found guilty of plotting terrorist attacks.
Franco Albrecht, a 33-year-old father of three, was arrested by Vienna police in April 2017 when he tried to retrieve a loaded gun he had previously hidden in an airport bathroom.
When he was fingerprinted, the German-born man was matched to the identity of David Benjamin, who had presented himself as a Syrian man seeking asylum in December 2015.
In an 18-month trial, prosecutors said Albrecht had planned, while posing as a Syrian refugee, a series of so-called false flag murders of public figures.
Long before he invented “David Benjamin”, Albrecht had developed links to far-right organisations plotting to murder anti-fascist campaigners and senior politicians — and overthrow the German state. In his cellar, alongside his army gear and a forbidden German copy of Mein Kampf, police found a semiautomatic rifle, two semiautomatic pistols and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and explosive devices, some of which he had stolen from the Bundeswehr.
The father of three, who appeared in court on Friday with long hair, a dark beard and in a red shirt, admitted owning the weapons but insisted they were for self-defence, should the German state collapse.
Prosecutors accused Albrecht of being a “far-right terrorist” and demanded a six-year sentence, but his defence insisted there was insufficient evidence to prove he was planning any concrete attacks.
The original case was thrown out for lack of evidence but an appeal took an unexpected turn in February when Albrecht, who was not on remand during the trial, was arrested after a trip to Strasbourg. Police found him carrying a box of Nazi memorabilia and notes that described threats to the German nation from intermarriage and immigration.
Overwhelmed asylum system
During the trial Albrecht, born in Offenbach near Frankfurt, insisted he had gone undercover as a refugee to expose failings in Germany’s asylum system, which was overwhelmed by more than one million people in 2015-2016 from Syria, Afghanistan and northern Africa.
The ease with which he posed as a Syrian refugee — wearing his mother’s self-tanner and shoe polish in his beard — has raised uncomfortable questions about Germany’s asylum system.
His November 2016 interview as “David Benjamin” took place in a mixture of broken English and French, because the asylum applicant spoke no Arabic.
He claimed to be a Syrian Christian with French roots who had walked his way to Germany via the Balkan route. He had no documents but was granted refugee status in January 2016, including all related privileges such as a monthly allowance of €409.
The scam was exposed by a coincidence worthy of a Hollywood thriller. The gun he hid at Vienna airport had been discovered by a cleaning lady and reported to police, who were waiting when he went to retrieve it.
Prosecutors presented Albrecht as part of an extensive neo-Nazi prepper scene in Germany. They produced extensive documents and personal notes in which Albrecht appeared obsessed with far-right ethnic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The notes are filled with praise for Adolf Hitler and Russian president Vladimir Putin and appear to favour declaring war on any state, or state actors, that he viewed as endangering Germany’s ethnic purity.
The court agreed with the prosecutor that Albrecht was a dangerous far-right activist with extremist nationalist views. It emerged during the trial that his army superiors had already noted Albrecht’s “racist views”, but had not investigated further. They have yet to explain how he lived his double life as a Syrian refugee in Bavaria, while officially stationed with a Franco-German brigade in Strasbourg.
Throughout his two trials, Albrecht has maintained his innocence and insisted he would appeal any guilty verdict.
